


as a kid my hands were red

by stormwarnings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Decisions, Eventual Happy Ending, Everyone is Queer, F/F, Female Castiel/Female Dean Winchester, Genderbending, HERE I AM, Hurt/Comfort, If Supernatural (TV) Were on HBO, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Pining, Sisterhood, Slow Burn, THEYRE LESBIAN YOUR HONOR, genderbent, i said i would not come back here, kinda gender dysphoria?, non-linear timeline, not all of them just most, probably, slightly pick and choose but mainly always the opposite gender, softer and harsher world in equal turns, sorta - Freeform, tenderness towards existence, the in between moments are very important, will eventually beat canon with a stick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 42,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormwarnings/pseuds/stormwarnings
Summary: "You are still the Righteous Man," Cas says, her voice lovely and mournful, "and Sam the Girl King. It is ironic, is it not, that you are female. I think, in some way, that makes it worse."Deanna doesn’t want to ask why.Cas tells her anyway. "Girls, I have found, are so full of hunger."(A guide by the Winchester sisters on how to: break the world, fix the world, make friends, lose friends, drink, bleed, sit on a throne, find a family, and eventually, build a home.)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 26
Kudos: 43





	1. smashed in my car windows

**Author's Note:**

> a few notes
> 
> -i told myself i would not be writing fic for this fandom considering the other five fics i should be working on instead but here we are. i just wanted some girls ok. as such this will be updated sporadically (and i apologize to those awaiting my other fics i will get there)  
> -a lot of headcanons inspired by hbo spn stuff on tumblr, most prominently drawing from [fromcenotaphy](https://fromcenotaphy.tumblr.com/)  
> -title is from 'white lie' by the lumineers. other notable songs that fit this story are 'my eyes', 'jimmy sparks', 'gun song'  
> -adams character may be ooc but i dont really care there was not a whole lot to go on in the first place so  
> -religious undertones born of me being a girl who was raised catholic (hence angelterror and depictions of the Virgin Mary) but who is now mostly agnostic and confused so do keep that in mind  
> -this is vaguely following the seasons of the show up to a point - nowhere near done, but will probably be around ten chapters

Deanna wakes up in a casket.

She shoves her way out, digs her way through the dirt, finds herself in a circle of flattened trees. The jolt of being in a body that is physical is sudden, and she wonders briefly if this is hell, dry dirt and the absence of God in God’s country. She remembers the baying of the hellhounds, the tearing in her chest. She stares at herself in a gas station mirror – is she her? Are her eyes black, or green? Her nose still crooked, her freckles still there? Her hair is a mess, like she’s been dead and buried, long and dirty blonde, and for a moment she touches it like it’s not her own. A trip six feet under did not, unfortunately, make her taller, and she’s still erring on the side of, _oh, honey, are you sure you want those fries_? That’s when she rolls her sleeve up, checking the edges of the tattoo that mark this body as hers, and she finds the handprint, burned, _branded_ into her shoulder.

That’s also around the time the windows start shattering. She claps her hands over her ears and then screams without realizing she is screaming, wonders if her blood will sizzle when it hits the dirt and this will all be just another punishment –

(Bobby will ask her later. _Do you remember?_ It will echo around the room – _do you remember_? _Do you remember_?

 _No_ , Deanna says, because she doesn’t. It’s a lie. She doesn’t know it’s a lie. She shifts her gaze back to her fingernails, free of black, and full-body flinches, hearing screams. The handprint on her shoulder throbs, and she wonders if she tears off her shirt, will the tattoo of wings on her back still be the same? Does she deserve it, anymore, or will it break through her skin? Is she alive, is she alive – _do you remember_?)

So Deanna goes to Bobby, because what-the-hell-else is she going to do. She gets a mouthful of holy water, finds Sammy in a hotel room with a girl, ganks a demon, and watches a woman’s eyes get burned out. And –

“My name is Castiel,” a girl proclaims, standing in the barn, the largest and the smallest thing in the room all at the same time. A roll of thunder, and a flash of light, and the understanding that there is something cosmic at work here. “I am an Angel of the Lord.”

(Someday, she will tell Deanna this – _my name was once Cassiel. I was the angel of tears, and of temperance. I presided over the deaths of kings_.

They will both close their eyes, and look to the dirt. Look to the ground. There is nothing holy about this end. There is nothing grand. Cas puts her hand on Deanna’s shoulder. _I’m sorry_ , she will say. Apologies like this, apologies that are so general, are such a human thing – _I’m sorry you had to do this. I’m sorry you had to survive this. I’m sorry that you did not see the sun on the flowers of the mountains in the spring._ Such fragile words. Deanna thinks they make her beautiful.

 _Why,_ Deanna will ask.

 _You are still the Righteous Man,_ Cas says, _and Sam the Girl King. It is ironic, is it not, that you are female. I think, in some way, that makes it worse._

Deanna doesn’t want to ask why.

Cas tells her anyway. _Girls, I have found, are so full of hunger_.

Deanna will think about crying. She and Sammy, all set to replay a cosmic battle. Because they, like all girls, _ache_ for a place in the world that’s their own. Is this their fault? Or simply their predestined path?

 _It’s fine_ , she will say.

It never is.)

“Who are you?” Deanna asks again. _There’s no such thing as angels, Sam_.

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” this Castiel says, and her gravelly voice is like the tolling of bells in the church-tower, like the cries of the hawks in the cold north, like the howling of the wolf in the wood that is not something monstrous but rather something wild.

“Yeah,” Deanna says. “Sure.”

She stabs the girl in the chest, straight through a nice white blouse and a pretty navy scarf and a tan trench coat. She ignores the mess of black hair, and the blue eyes that are clear like the morning sky at dawn, and she kills, because that’s what she’s been raised to do.

Castiel, terrifyingly inhuman, does not even react. There is no pain as she pulls the knife, buried up to the hilt, back out. One moment it is in, and the next it is not. She hands it back to Deanna, and Deanna has the sudden realization that this girl is not a girl but rather a thing. Then Bobby’s there, with a crowbar, and he swings it towards the girl with all the force he has. She turns, small and knobby-limbed, and puts a hand up. Yet again, there is no flinch. One moment it is moving, and the next it is not. Her fingers flash to his forehead, and then he is collapsing to the ground. Deanna makes a pained noise and rushes to him, and the girlthing steps back to let her pass.

“Your friend is not hurt,” Castiel says. “Merely sleeping.”

“Why should I believe you?” Deanna asks, because angels _don’t exist_ , no matter what Sammy says, and this girlthing is no different from any other monsters they’ve hunted, even if she’s more powerful. “You burned Pamela’s eyes out!”

Castiel stares at her, and something flashes, and the lights that were not already broken pop and shatter with sparks and screams. In the not-darkness and the shadow, something flares up behind her, and then there are wings, beautiful and horrifying, and Deanna does not kneel to anyone but for a moment she can almost remember the words of the Bible that Sammy whispers, the screams and the herald of God saying _do not be afraid_.

Then the moment passes, and the girlthing is just a girlthing, still staring. “I warned her,” she says, quietly and intensely. “I warned her not to look. It is not my fault what the foolishness of humans brings down upon themselves.”

Deanna snarls, trying to cover how scared she is. “The foolishness of – she was a good person, you bastard.”

“I did not say she was not,” the girlthing says calmly. “Good is not dependent on the mistakes that are made. You are living proof of that.”

Deanna snorts.

Castiel tilts her head, and then says, almost curiously, “You don’t think you deserve to be saved.”

Deanna is – angry, and so very tired, and she pours it all out. “Why did you do it then?”

( _Angels are watching over you_ , her mother used to say.

 _Thanks for that,_ Deanna wants to say. _You didn’t have to, but thanks for that_.)

“Because God commanded it. And because,” Castiel says, “we have work for you.”

* * *

They’re bad at talking, about things like this. They always have been.

“So a nose ring,” Deanna starts, because her sister’s still her sister and also because she can’t keep still. There’s something buzzing in her veins. “And, hey – didn’t know you did the queer thing. Like, girls? I mean, anything’s better than that Ruben dude, but he was a demon, so it’s really not about – uh, the gender, you know, it’s just that – _demon_.”

“Shut up,” Sammy says, and Deanna stills.

(Sammy had cried, one day, and said, _how do I know if I’m fucked up, De? How do I know if I’m wrong?_ She’d held her copy of the Bible, the same one she’d always had since the fire, dog-eared and torn, and she’d said the word _faggot_ the way John did, which was to say, casually and terribly.

Deanna hadn’t known what to do. But when her sister mumbled something about pretty girls, her stomach had dropped, and she’d turned red and sputtered something, and she tried not to make Sammy cry but _this_ –

 _Figure it out,_ she’d snapped.

Later, Deanna will think that the worst thing John ever did to her was make her believe that Sammy had to figure these things out alone.)

Deanna looks at her sister then, _really_ looks at her. Her hair’s cut closer to her chin, now, wavy and brown and kind of messed up. Her nails are still a chipped black, which is and has always been the only constant in Deanna’s life so she’s kind of glad for it. And Sammy’s tall of course, that runner’s build that she’s always harping at Deanna about, but more than anything she looks tired, and twitchy. She looks, Deanna thinks, far too much like she’s waiting on a fix.

“Where’s your Bible?” Deanna asks, because it’s not on hand, and normally if the case concerns it Sammy’s leafing through it.

“Burned it,” Sammy says, and her voice is sharp.

And maybe that’s the first time it occurs, this subconscious realization of the lines between them, fighting a war millennia in the making, demons and angels and Heaven and Hell – but she doesn’t know that, not yet.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have, though,” Sammy admits, softly, like an olive branch. Deanna blinks, and the darkness recedes from her nerdy little sister. “I mean, angels? The four Horsemen of the apocalypse? Holy _shit_ , De.”

But that part doesn’t really hit home until Deanna’s laying on Bobby’s floor and trying to process Magnus’s ghost. That little girl's ghost. She stands up to get water, and there’s a small figure resting against the window. For a moment, Deanna looks at her, and she’s towering and glowing and swirling with eyes and rings like fire. And then Deanna blinks, and it’s just the girlthing. Castiel.

The fucking _angel._

“Thanks for the help today,” Deanna says.

Castiel looks up at her. She does not, Deanna realizes, blink. Or breathe, it seems. Her hair is less windblown, more butch, cut close on one side and all wavy and short on the other. She is still and unmoving in the way that a snake is before it strikes, and if she weren’t standing on her own two feet Deanna would think she was a corpse.

“Is that – are you,” Deanna starts, and then takes a deep breath. “Is that a _person_?”

Castiel looks down at the body she’s wearing, like she’s forgotten about it. “She was very devout,” Castiel replies. “An elder sister, like you.”

The thought of this makes Deanna want to puke.

(Later, it will not. Later, she will contemplate it. What would she do, for her younger sisters? Would she do this?

 _We do all kinds of things for our family_ , Michael will say, voice soft and quiet, like Castiel’s, like Mary’s, like a friend. _You understand, Deanna. You know how I feel._

She will, someday.)

“Why the holy secretary look, then?”

Here is where a human would shrug. Castiel does not react, in any way.

“I thought angels were supposed to help,” Deanna says instead, kind of angry. “Where were you when the – fuckin’ ghost, the rising of the witnesses? When he was trying to rip out my heart? Where was God, for that matter, when I was thrown into Hell in the first place? Where was God, where were _all_ of you, in any of this?”

Castiel does blink this time, long and slow. “Angels,” she says lowly, voice like gravel, “are soldiers. We are the embodiment of the wrath of Heaven and the Lord. We are God’s weapons – ”

“Yeah, _God_ ,” Deanna scoffs.

“And we do not question what mortal affairs He involves us in,” Castiel continues. Her eyes flash, and Deanna wonders if this is what it’s like to be next to a bolt of lightning. “I took you from Hell, Deanna Winchester, and I can put you back.”

Deanna takes a deep breath and wonders what would happen if she stabbed Castiel with the kitchen knife in the corner. Deanna’s never been a saint, not ever, and this girlthing is just a monster, even if she’s an angel. Deanna’s good at killing; that may be all she’s _ever_ been good at.

Castiel’s face is stony. “You have far more capacity for good than even you think.”

“Stop doing the freaky mindreading thing,” Deanna splutters. “You just said I deserved to go back to Hell!”

“No,” Castiel replies. “I meant that you should show me some respect.”

Deanna feels chills run up and down her spine and something crawl up her throat like terror, so they move the conversation to the impending apocalypse.

* * *

She wakes up terrified some days, now. She watches her father die, and watches her mother kick ass, and she thinks about confronting Sammy about the demon blood running through her veins, and she wonders who her mother even was if she was making deals with the Yellow-Eyed demon.

(But Deanna had done that too, hadn’t she – made a deal with a demon because Sammy’s body lay dead on the ground and she couldn’t handle that, couldn’t understand that, couldn’t live in a world where that was the only answer. Maybe they were too dependent on each other. Maybe it was an issue that they were each other’s lives. But they’d never had another choice, and they never, really, would.

 _Thanks, dad_.)

And there’s Castiel. Castiel, who sends her back in time with the press of her fingers, and moves in and out of space like it is as irrelevant as a door. Sammy keeps asking to meet her, and Deanna keeps shrugging, but it’s not like Sammy’s telling Deana everything either, and the two of them are a fucked-up, matched pair like they’ve always been. Instead of talking to each other, they hunt down a vampire that’s preying on the homeless, because empty motel rooms are a special kind of prison. And that girl Sammy’s with – she sounds an awful lot like Ruben had, which Deanna _hates_ , but when she tries to confront her sister that goes about as well as expected.

“I just got you back, De!” Sammy yells, and Ruben-Ruby-now-thanks ducks out of there as quick as she can.

“Doesn’t seem like you want me back!” Deanna snarls in return.

(They will have this argument many times. They are, always, saying the same thing.

 _I need you_.

 _Please let me help you._ )

In the motel room, something falls off a shelf. Things are shaking, but not in the cosmic way that they do around Castiel, just in the Sammy way that things have _always_ been weird around her. “Look,” Sammy says, because if there’s one thing she got from their father it’s her stubbornness. “I have to make something good of this.” There’s an ocean of pain in her voice, but Deanna doesn’t want to look that closely. “I have to make something good. I have to try to be something good.”

"You are good,” Deanna says, far too late. The story of her life.

"I’m using these powers for _good_ ,” Sammy says. “For me.” Her eyes are too intense, not dark like a demon’s but bright and glittering, surrounded by smudged eyeliner. Her hands shake as she picks up a Bible stolen from a Target, purple highlighter throughout for Revelations research, the Rosary hanging around her neck.

( _Oh, Sam_ , Deanna used to say, in the same tone John said it. When she noticed why Sammy flinched, she started saying, _oh, Sammy_.

Someday, Cas will look at Sammy and say, _oh, Sammy_ , and they will both sit down and cry. Deanna will not know, because Deanna will not be there.)

“They should’ve told the truth,” Deanna says, even though she wants to punch Sammy. Wants to punch someone. “Angels are fucking assholes _._ ”

* * *

They sit in a bar with Ruby, who’s pretty and dark and smiles like she wants to eat you. Deanna’s not into girls, not really, and while that might be a lie she’s definitely not into _Ruby_ , at least not as much as Sammy is, so it’s a little strange even beyond the whole demon-in-the-room. Ruby eats her burger fast, same as Deanna, instead of talking. Sammy’s got a salad and a complaint about their latest dead end of Lilith-research, but Ruby interrupts her to say, “Fries.”

Sammy, surprisingly, takes some.

(Later, Deanna will say, _even the worst things are good for us, in some way_.

Cas will have sad, sad, eyes. _No,_ she says, _they aren’t._

Deanna chokes out a laugh that sounds like crying. Aren’t they? Mustn’t they be, in some way? Or was all that pain worth nothing?)

A hunter comes up to the table. “Winchester,” he says, nodding at Deanna.

“In the flesh,” she replies, smiling wolfishly at him, but there’s a warning in her eyes, and wariness in his. She doesn’t let other hunters fuck her, and they all know this – she never gives them that kind of power over her.

"Heard you were dead,” he says.

Maybe, she thinks, that wariness isn’t just because he knows her rules. For a moment, she thinks that wariness might just be because of her, and she’s just buzzed enough to enjoy it. “Didn’t stick,” she replies.

Across from her, Ruby shifts, shoving next to Sammy’s long frame.

The hunter leers, but it’s less a leer and more an examination, of Deanna’s flannels and messy bun, of Sammy’s goth-lumberjack vibe, of Ruby’s mascara and skintight jeans. They’re a motley crew, and Sammy’s narrowing her eyes at him in return – _I’ll kick your ass right back,_ it means, because Deanna’s seen it far too many times in the mirror.

( _The Winchesters_ , people whisper, _are bad news. The younger one’s got the devil himself running through her veins. The older one’s been to Hell and came back swinging. They let the demons out, brought the angels back, made deals with gods._

 _The Winchesters_ , people say, _don’t die._

Someday, monsters will yell and shriek and laugh that they have caught a _Winchester_. Deanna will sort of understand, in some ways, because she’s not humble. They’ll have saved and destroyed the world again and again. She’ll welcome the darkness, welcome the myths. Humans can be monsters too, after all, especially when they’re raised as killers. They’ll stand back to back: a girl who takes _judge jury and executioner_ to a Biblical level, a girl holding a demon-killing blade with demon blood in her veins, a girl with a shotgun and a sneer and a duct-taped soul, a girl marked by Heaven who takes people apart better even than Hell’s worst –

 _Don’t fuck with the Winchester sisters_ , the hunters tell each other, between stakes in vampires and back alleys. _You won’t live to tell the tale._ )

Sammy pulls Ruby closer. It puts a bad taste in Deanna’s mouth, but the guy twitches, and Deanna notices that there’s more of them, crowding behind him, standing up from booths. She glances up, meeting Ruby’s eyes across the table. Deanna doesn’t like the demon, probably never will, but if worst comes to worst Deanna’s pretty sure right now they’ll be on the same side, which is to say, on Sammy’s.

She takes another sip of her beer.

“Hey, hold on, the other one’s here, too,” the hunter says, putting a hand down on the table, like he’s finally figured out this is _Sam, John Winchester’s girl_. Deanna doesn’t blame him. Sammy’s got a different feel about her now; she’s always been sharp, but now it’s dark and full of pain. “Samantha, right?”

Sammy flinches.

He keeps going, smiling in an uncomfortable way and glancing back at his buddies. “Heard about this one down the grapevine. Maybe we oughta put her down for good. Take another freak out of the world.”

Ruby, because she has no self-preservation and also because she and Deanna are itching for a fight that neither of them can have without Sammy crying, rolls her eyes black and says, sweet as can be, “That’s enough now, boys.”

The hunter steps back, going for his gun, and he’s not the only one.

Then Deanna’s slamming herself to her feet, and there’s the taste of alcohol in her mouth, but more than that there’s something buzzing in her veins. She didn’t used to be this blood-thirsty she doesn’t think, but now more than anything she wants to make people _hurt_. They’re all too slow to react to her, and she kicks the first one in the balls and takes a punch to the face. It feels good, it feels better than good, it feels _alive_ , and there’s blood in her mouth but it just tastes like all she’s ever known.

Deanna grins, hopes her teeth are bloody too. “Anybody else?”

Ruby’s there then, and Sammy’s yelling at them to stop but Deanna can’t stop, not now. She loses herself in the exhilaration of it, the way it brings sharpness back into her world. She wonders what her dad would say, seeing her fighting alongside a demon, but then she remembers dad telling her that she might need to put Sammy down, too. She and the demon slam heads into tables, and Deanna loves this, loves knocking down men a foot taller than her who think because she’s a short girl that she can’t fight, loves the sting of it in her fists and loves the pain of it –

Then there’s a gun in her face. She freezes, and goes for the one in her waistband, and wonders why they haven’t been kicked out yet.

“Slut,” the hunter says, and spits.

Deanna just watches it, just watches him, which means she’s just watching when the entire gun explodes a foot from her face.

There’s a sharp breath from Ruby, to her left.

“De,” Sammy snaps. “We’re leaving.”

Deanna turns to her younger sister, sees the blood drip down her nose. She comes to the realization that was _Sammy_ at the same time as the rest of the hunters do, as the few still standing draw their guns and start murmuring prayers, as they realize that this isn’t just a barfight, not anymore. One of them actually makes the sign of the cross, which is – fucking _hilarious_ , and Deanna’s still laughing when Ruby and Sammy drag her out of there, still loose in the chest and loose in the fists, wondering where her guardian angel is.

They are quite literally chased out, one of the hunters and a bartender threatening to call the cops, and it’s Sammy who turns around. She’s imposing, standing there in the neon light of the flashing signs, red reflecting off her face against the night. She holds up a hand and the guy flinches.

"Leave us alone,” Sammy says, and twists her hand, and there’s the sound of his gun crumpling into a ball, easy as that. There’s blood coming out of Sammy’s eyes, dripping down her cheeks like tears, and Deanna’s still got enough sense to know that they need to get out of here, now, before the gaping hunter rallies his wits.

“Car,” Ruby says, and Deanna gets the keys as Ruby takes Sammy’s weight on her slender frame. She situates Sammy in shotgun and jumps in the back, and then Deanna’s slamming on the gas and pulling away, cackling like she’s losing it. Maybe she is.

“This isn’t funny,” Sammy says stuffily, holding a hand to her nose. She looks kind of like she might pass out.

“Don’t get blood on the seats, Samantha,” Deanna tells her, wired enough to jab.

Sammy glares. “This isn’t _funny_ , Deanna Millie.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Deanna snaps back, “this is the funniest _fucking_ thing that’s happened to us since I stopped being dead.” Maybe they would’ve started hitting each other but something catches her eye, lightning arcing across the sky in the rearview mirror except it’s just the angel, blinking into existence. “Motherfuck – ”

Ruby makes an aborted scream and Sammy twists around in her seat, eyes going wide and eager. “Are you Castiel – ”

“Get me _out of here_ ,” Ruby snarls, trying to unlock the doors.

“Hey, angel,” Deanna says. “Welcome to the party.”

Castiel is giving narrow-eyed looks to Ruby. “You reek of sin.”

Ruby’s eyes go black. “And you look like a whore.”

Castiel ignores her. “You should not have done that,” she says, voice low and rumbling.

( _Forty years in Hell_ , they tell her. _Four months were forty years in Hell, and you remember it all_.

Deanna’s spent more time in Hell than she has alive. What does that make her, she wonders. What does that make her.)

Castiel says something about seals, about breaking them. A warning – more seals they’ve broken. “Turning on your kindred only furthers Lucifer’s plan.”

“Oh, great,” Ruby replies.

“Holy shit,” Sammy says, still staring at Castiel. “You’re – you’re a real angel.”

Ruby looks rebellious in the backseat. Deanna snickers. This is the first time the angel has come in handy at all, and of course it’s in order to make the demon jealous. Castiel tilts her head, looking at Sammy, and in the mirror Deanna sees eyes on her cheeks, eyes on her neck, eyes on her lips. She glances back to the road and swerves into her lane.

“You are unclean,” Castiel says, the angel filled with fire to the girl crying blood. “Yet you exorcised Samhain. We did not have to smite that town, thanks to you and your sister.”

Sammy seems struck speechless. Deanna, though, says, “You _what_?”

Ruby snorts. “Heaven’s _mercy_ ,” she says, catching Sammy’s eyes. “You see what Heaven’s mercy will do? Do you see it?”

“Hush,” Castiel tells her, dangerous and righteous.

“Look at the _ruin_ they will bring,” Ruby spits, almost laughing. “Look at what their _justice_ truly is.”

* * *

Anna raves.

( _Deanna Winchester is saved_ , the angels had cried. Cas had sung to her in a thousand voices, a chorus all her own.

 _I shouldn’t have_ , Cas will tell her someday, bleak and alone. _I should have left you there. This never should have happened._

 _Thanks_ , Deanna says, not sure whether she means it. _Thanks for that._

There’s too much between the two of them. There will be a whole history, a decade of pain. The kind of pain that only the Winchesters could bring, and only to those they love.

 _Deanna Winchester is saved,_ the bell had tolled. The deaths of kings, how the red tears dripped down the Virgin Mother’s face.

 _If you can’t save her_ , John whispered before he died. _Kill her_.

 _No_ , Deanna told him. _No, never_.

There was always too much between them, her family. A lifetime of hardness, even after Sammy ran away to California. The kind of calluses that only pain wrought by those you loved could create.)

Anna is curling into themself, whispering and murmuring and tearing their red hair, and they slit their wrists and press their palms to sigils that banish even angels, and the first thing Sammy asks is how to write them again.

“Where is your third,” Anna asks, eerily still in how they exist. Deanna isn’t sure she’s seen them blink, either. They point to a branch on the sigil. “That’s wrong.”

“Our third?” Deanna asks.

Ruby looks equally curious.

“Good things come in threes,” Anna says. “They say there are three – maiden, mother, crone, father, son, Holy Ghost.”

“It’s just the two of us,” Deanna tells them. “Unless you mean demon-bitch back there.”

“Ruby’s not a bitch,” Anna says, eyes wide. “Ruby helped me.”

Deanna scoffs, and Ruby looks like the cat that got the cream. It occurs to Deanna that Ruby might be using Anna to make Sammy jealous, since Sammy’s whole falling-over-herself in front of Castiel. This makes Deanna want to vomit.

“It takes only blood freely given,” Anna is lecturing Sammy, swaying a little bit. “Be careful.”

When they find out Anna’s a fallen angel, things make more sense. They’re wearing their body like a vessel, even though it’s their own – they almost pass out from the blood loss, genuinely confused as to why.

(Someday, Cas falls – really falls.

She wears Deanna’s jeans and they hang off her hips, an empty house with nobody home. When she pulls off her shirt in the Impala, her ribcage juts out. Deanna’s eyes are drawn to her sports bra but when Cas turns away, Deanna can count every one of her vertebrae. Old ladies at the diner look at their former angel with true concern, look at the hollows under her eyes, ask _you sure you don’t want anything to eat, honey_?

Cas will shake her head and then look guiltily at Sammy and ask for something small, still not able to stomach the overwhelming taste of it all. She’ll forget to drink water for hours on end and then faint – _God damnit, Cas, you need to give your body energy! –_ and some days she will sleep for two hours total and some days she will sleep from five am to midnight. She’ll throw herself at monsters with a feral viciousness, more akin to a wild animal than to a human, and forget that she can’t just heal her body anymore. She’ll grumble as Ada stitches up her wounds, but collapse like a tiny ragdoll in Sammy’s arms.

Deanna wants to rage at her, wants to rip into her and tear at her and be _angry_ , but she can’t. Not when Cas looks so vulnerable. Not when she looks so horribly human and so horribly within reach.)

“Why do you think I fell, Deanna?” Anna asks.

Deanna answers honestly, and bitterly. “I have no fuckin’ clue.”

Anna leans in close, their red hair falling against Deanna’s face. “Because you humans are so beautiful in your freedom.”

Deanna kisses them, and then she yanks back like she’s been shocked. Anna might be fallen, might not have all their grace, but she still recognizes the fizzing taste of it behind her teeth, how sweet it is. She gasps something out, but Anna just laughs, and presses her back, which, _holy shit,_ she didn’t know she was queer, or whatever Sammy calls it, but the taste of the grace is like a high and this one is so good and Anna is so _beautiful_ –

(There will, always, be a choice like this one.

 _The world_ , they say, _or Samantha_.

Deanna knows what her answer, always, always is.

Here’s the catch, though.

 _It doesn’t have to be one or the other,_ Sammy reminds her.)

“Oh, Deanna,” Alistairs says in the barn. He’s in the body of an old white man, the kind who’d try and stick his hand up Deanna’s skirt when she was little. “Oh, _Deanna_ , sugar. You looked so much prettier with razors in your hands. Such wasted potential.”

His face haunts her dreams, leering at her, and then Castiel is leaping at him and for the first time she sees the avenging angel that the Bible promised, the ones who razed the earth and fought the warriors of Satan. Deanna returns the favor and swings a crowbar into Alistair’s head when he chokes Castiel. And then Anna has their grace back, and the earth is shaking as Heaven and Hell match forces and then it is all over.

“I remember Hell,” Deanna tells Sammy, the words drawn out of her like rusty razor blades. “I remember it all.”

* * *

Things don’t get better just because Deanna was honest with Sammy. If it’s possible, they get worse. Sammy looks at her with regret and pain in her eyes, even more so than usual, and it makes Deanna want to punch her. Instead, she goes out and punches other people, drinking down bars and drinking up attention and slamming fists into faces that are attached to bodies with wandering hands.

( _You know who you’re turning into_ , Bobby said to her once.

 _Say it_ , Deanna told him, exhilarated and nauseous all at the same time. It didn’t help that she was drunk off her ass.

He’d given her that exhausted look. _I don’t need to._

Fine, sue her, so she was her father’s daughter. Wasn’t that all John had ever wanted?)

“Really,” Sammy asks, when Deanna pours some whiskey in her coffee. “You can’t run away from things forever, you know.”

“Sure I can,” Deanna replies. “So what’s up with this ghost?”

They drive down backroads in the dark, the silence as haunted as they are. Neither of them can handle the emptiness, and even their normal jokes, _bitch, jerk, pass me that book,_ feel strained. Sammy disappears and Deanna knows she’s with Ruby, but every time she asks they just end up yelling at each other; the knowledge that they’re so outnumbered, with this apocalypse, with Sammy’s jewel-bright eyes and how Deanna doesn’t know how to help her. And now there’s this – thing, between them. Anna’s words pick at them both, and Alistair’s too, and Sammy keeps looking at Deanna like…like she’s ashamed. There’s so much between them, and maybe were they younger they’d be punching it out but instead it’s just sharp words and angry silences.

(Someday, Sammy will cry, and tell her the truth. _I couldn’t help but be relieved_.

 _That I,_ Dean stops, then forces the words out. _That I broke_?

Sammy’s eyes, imploring. They’re both so bruised and beaten. _You’re the best person I know, De. If you did, then…then it makes it ok that I gave in, too._

Deanna swallows, and she’ll draw her sister into her arms, like they used to when they were little, before John trained the softness out of them. _I’m sorry, Sammy. I’m so sorry._

 _For what_?

_For – for everything._

She can’t say any more.)

Deanna makes out with guys in restrooms and then gets kicked out of bars, stands in the parking lot and laughs, drunk and split-lipped and hating herself. She wants to hurt someone. Except that’s not true, is it. She just wants to hurt herself.

“Deanna,” comes the low voice. Girls’ voices shouldn’t be that low, but then again Castiel isn’t a girl.

“Hey, Cas,” Deanna says, and the nickname slides off her tongue easy as that. She glances up, at the trenchcoated angel who stands backlit by neon blue, unknowable and impossible. Deanna isn’t sure if her vision is doubling, or if there is actually more to Castiel in the darkness – gentle and inhuman, the small figure shadowed by wings and horns and those blue, _blue_ eyes. They might be glowing. Does she have a halo, or is that just a trick of the light?

“You need to leave,” Castiel says.

“Leave?” Deanna responds. “Sweetheart, I’m just getting started.”

Castiel grabs her arm, and starts yanking her towards the car.

“What,” Deanna says, and the words come to her without even knowing what they mean. “Hate to see your righteous girl not acting so righteous?”

Castiel stops, and her eyes flare, and in them Deanna beholds galaxies. “You do a disservice to yourself, dirtying a soul so bright,” she says, which, _thanks_.

Deanna because she’s cruel and because she breaks everything she touches, replies, “So what about that poor girl’s soul? Sam was wondering, you know, and I was too, how different it was from demonic possession. What games do you play to make them say yes?” Castiel’s an angel wearing someone’s body like a spare shirt so it’s not like she ever reacts, not even the twitches or tensing that Deanna would go off with Sammy, and Deanna goads her, saying, “Heaven’s weapon, didn’t you tell me? Isn’t it funny that you guys have to do the same thing the demons do? Is it humbling, in any way? We get to walk around in these bodies, and you guys all just have to _take_ them – Heaven and Hell aren’t so different here, are they? I feel like I’m uniquely qualified to – ”

Castiel slams her against the Impala, which, _holy shit_.

Deanna is, abruptly, very sober. Her bones ache but it doesn’t matter in the face of the grace-high hissing through her teeth and down her arms, and Castiel’s got a hand against her throat, looking at her so closely, with that tilted head.

“Do not compare us to them,” Castiel says very quietly. “You are different, Deanna. But you still know little of what you speak.”

“Then tell me.”

Castiel is still, in such a different way from Anna. It is so inherently wrong, so unfitting in the world, that Deanna cannot help but watch it. Watch her. She steps back, and Deanna drops to the ground.

Castiel says, “I can’t.”

Deanna rubs her throat and wonders if there will be bruises. “Why not?”

Castiel turns, all coiled power, and looks up towards the sky. It is empty, out in the Midwest, the stars so vast. She says, like she is trying not to be heard, “I have doubts, you know. But Heaven’s plan – I cannot.”

“What?” Deanna asks, limping over to her side. Her knee’s been out of sorts since a week after she got back from Hell.

Castiel looks back at her. There is no emotion in her face, but she reaches out a hand that is like a beam of sunlight and Deanna feels the grace sweep through her, gentler this time. “I suppose neither of us are the weapons we think we are.” Then, “You did well, capturing Alistair for us.”

“It wasn’t for you,” Deanna says, not happy to be reminded of Sammy, Sammy-and-Ruby, Sammy staring down Alistair with the demon blood bleeding from her nose, Sammy in a gas station bathroom murmuring to no one, Sammy curled up on a motel bed reciting patchwork passages of myths like they could ever save the two of them. Like anything could ever save the two of them.

Everything had been so much better when she was drunk.

Castiel blinks at her. “Oh, Deanna,” she says. “Everything you do is for us.”

* * *

Sammy winces as she swallows down her eggs.

“You good?” Deanna asks.

“Too much salt,” Sammy replies, which – makes no sense, but whatever. Deanna doesn’t want to fight with her, not this morning, not now.

Deanna turns to the blonde girl sitting with them, who had called John’s phone that was nearly dead and has so far reacted to neither holy water, nor silver, nor Sammy’s horrible jokes. “So your name is Ada.”

“Ada Milligan,” she says, and meets Deanna’s eyes unflinchingly, and _oh_. Oh, that’s Sammy’s glare, alright. “John was my biological father, like I said.”

“He’s been dead for a while,” Deanna tells her.

“I figured,” Ada replies. “Cause you’ve said.”

Sammy snorts. Deanna doesn’t want to hear it; Sammy’s already told her plenty how, _actually, Ada Milligan is realer than we are. Yes, De, it might be a trap, but she actually checks out_. “How come we didn’t hear about you earlier?”

“John barely showed up more than once a year. I’d show you the birth certificate but, you know, I wasn’t really expecting…this.”

“Why should we believe you?”

“Come on, we’ve gone over this already, don’t you have _any_ trust – ”

“She’s telling the truth,” Sammy says. “I think I dreamt this, and remember what Anna said?”

Deanna closes her mouth. John always told them never to trust men. Deanna doesn’t know why she’s surprised that this should’ve included him, too.

“I get it,” Sammy says to Ada, surprisingly gentle. Jesus, the girl looks so young. “He was a shit dad.”

Deanna opens her mouth, but Ada scowls, quietly shell-shocked. “At least you got him.”

Sammy’s mouth purses. “Not really.”

Ada purposefully relaxes her shoulders. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter now.”

Deanna sighs. She looks so much like Sammy, sitting like that, and Deanna’s always known she’d do anything for her family. “What did you need?”

“I need to, uh, get away.” Ada looks like the whole talking thing isn’t her favorite either. Maybe it’s genetic. “My mom’s ex-boyfriend keeps checking on me but it’s, like, the kind that makes you want to put on a turtleneck shirt and never look in the mirror. And all my classmates look at me like I’m going to snap, and school is so dumb, like – nothing matters. Everyone I love is dead. I don’t care about fucking anatomy, you know.”

( _At Stanford I was the freak with the knife collection,_ Jo yelled at his mother.

Sammy had looked at him with understanding in her eyes.)

“It’s fine. I thought that I could just – I don’t know, go live with him for a little while. John. It’s fine.” Ada looks like she might be about to cry, all of a sudden. “Fucking monsters. Why’d they have to take my mom, too?”

Sammy puts a hand on her shoulder. Ada leans into it and then away, blinking furiously. Apparently terrifying codependency is also a genetic trait.

“Look,” Deanna says. “Our lives suck. They’re dangerous, and they’re not pretty.”

Sammy glares.

“But,” Deanna says, and scrubs a hand over her face, and yanks her hair behind her ears. She and Ada have the same type of hair – same dirty blonde-brown, same tangled half-curls. “You’re family. It’s your own choice.”

(Someday, Ada will watch how she pushes everyone away. _Why did you just let me in, easy as that_?

 _You won’t like the answer,_ Deanna will tell her. Deanna doesn’t really cry, but her little sisters make her want to, sometimes.

Ada’s got hard, even eyes, nowadays. There’s pretty ribbons braided into her hair. Deanna wonders what would have happened to her, in another world. Would she have finished school? Would she be a doctor? Would she have a life? A family?

 _Tell me_ , Ada says.

 _I couldn’t take care of Sammy,_ Deanna will reply. _But in that moment, I could take care of you._ )

So now Ada stretches her legs out in the backseat, all just-past-teenage snark. She’s barely got anything with her other than a laptop and textbooks, but she managed to hold onto some leggings and tee shirts. “I don’t need to dress like a hobo along with being one,” she says, and looks disdainfully at Sammy and Deanna’s matching flannels and bootcut jeans. But she steals Sammy’s old Stanford sweatshirt when they’re not looking – which is blatantly unfair, since it’s the comfiest thing Deanna or Sammy own – and Deanna realizes one day that the tank top she’s wearing is actually Ada’s, not hers. Ada fits in, somehow, like she’s their missing piece. Like they’ve been looking for a third, and now she’s here, even when she doesn’t understand their jokes, even when her memories of John don’t match up with theirs, even when they bicker and yell.

Deanna lies awake at night, listening to Sammy and Ada murmur. They get along better than Deanna and Ada, probably because Deanna’s so much like John, but also because Sammy and Ada both like all that lore and shit, like reading the books and that moment of _oh, so we’re hunting a shtriga – see here, where it makes sense_? Deanna just needs someone to hand her a gun and tell her where to aim it.

( _I suppose neither of us are the weapons we think we are_ , Cas had said.

Sure, Cas. Sure.)

Ada becomes a criminal in a small town in Nevada when a shapeshifter impersonates her. The shifter can’t seem to stop crying, and at the end of it all Ada’s name’s out there for vehicular manslaughter and Sammy’s looking at Deanna angrily when she calls the shifter a freak, and Deanna’s looking at the ground. Ada chops the shifter’s hair off, and Sammy steals them a car, and Deanna grits her teeth and wonders what John would say, seeing them helping the monster. Wonders, for a second, who’s actually the monster. Ada starts going by Ada Winchester, and Deanna wonders if she can trust anything John ever said.

She stitches up her arm, and Sammy leaves, muttering something about Walmart, so of course Ada and Deanna get into an argument.

“Not everything’s about you,” Ada says. “So would you stop being self-deprecating for one goddamn minute?”

Deanna closes her eyes. She is, possibly, drunk. “No, look, I’m just – I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have brought you with us.”

“Oh, great, you gonna leave me just like everyone else in my life? Was all that bullshit about sisterhood just – bullshit?”

Deanna starts, “There’s things here that you don’t know about – ”

“So tell me!”

“We’re fucked up!” Deanna might be yelling. “And we’re, like, thirty steps away from the apocalypse! And if you stay with us, you’re going to end up _dead_ , Ada, just like dad and just like both our moms and just like Sammy and just like _me_!”

Deanna hates talking about her feelings. She hates it so goddamn much. She wonders if she can make this as short as possible. Wonders if she can make it vicious enough that Ada will leave. Does she want Ada to leave – no, she likes having another sister who doesn’t look at her like she’ll fuck everything up forever and ever, though Deanna’s rapidly changing that. She hasn’t known Ada her entire life, but it still hurts to watch her hurt.

Deanna needs to punch someone.

“Dad died,” she says, “long ago. My mom made a deal with a demon and brought him back. Mom died, and dad spent all that time hunting the demon down. Dad got killed by the demon. Sam got killed by the demon, and I made a deal at a crossroads with one to bring her back. I got a year. Sam got the rest of her life, although if she keeps hanging out with Ruby-the-demon-bitch, we’ll see if she doesn’t just throw it away.”

Ada’s watching her. She’s pretty good at the whole _not_ -showing-her-emotions-behind-her-eyes thing. Or maybe Deanna just doesn’t know her well enough, yet. Christ, that’s scary, the knowing and the not-knowing.

“My soul went to Hell,” Deanna continues. “And then angels brought me back to life.” She twists the bottle in her hands. It’s cheap liquor, and it’s all gone. “There,” she says. “That’s why you shouldn’t be a fuckin’ Winchester. Everyone you love will just _die_.” And then she turns around and slams the bottle into whatever she can find, and the glass shards cut into her hands.

“Nice pity party. But you’re not leaving me.” Ada bites it out like it hurts. She bites it out like John used to bite things out, the few times he ever gave them praise. Hell, she probably learned that habit from John, just like Sammy and Deanna. “You said you wouldn’t.”

“Great,” Deanna says. “Just great.”

The door swings open, even though they locked it. Cas walks in, all five foot two of her filled with coiled power and a miffed expression like she can smell roadkill. Sammy’s hanging off her shoulder, high as a kite or drunk off her ass, either way completely out of it.

“Speak of the devil,” Deanna says, and then laughs. “Cas, meet Ada. Ada, meet Cas.”

Cas tilts her head at Ada. Ada steps back, and Deanna doesn’t fault her for it. The intensity of Cas’s eyes are not the only thing that shift her from heart-attack-attractive-secretary to Goddamn-angel-of-the-Lord, but the glow sure doesn’t help. “How curious,” Cas says. “Another Winchester.”

“Sure,” Ada replies. “ _Sure._ ”

Cas dumps Sammy on the floor. Deanna shoves forward to catch her, then winces when the pain across her hands puts bloody handprints on Sammy’s tee. She doesn’t even know how her palms can feel anything anymore; she’s sliced them open more times than she can count. Ada puts gentle fingers on Sammy’s shoulders. Ada actually likes Sammy, has taken a shine to her. Too bad she has to see the reality of them now – unable to talk to each other, high or drunk or angry all the time, so bloody-handed.

Cas takes Deanna’s palms, and light flares. Deanna’s spine straightens and she knocks her head back, gasping in a rattling breath as the grace goes screaming through her.

“Can you help her?” Ada asks, because Sammy’s out cold and apparently Ada’s not quite as fazed by the angel. Maybe she’s atheist. Deanna would find that funny. “Is she on something?”

"No,” Cas says coldly, but her fingers are gentle on Sammy’s face. “She is unclean. It will reject my grace.” She turns to Deanna. “You are vulnerable now, with Adamine too. Be careful, Deanna.” Her eyes shine with a horrible light, with grace. Deanna wants another taste of it.

Then Cas is gone.

“Your name is _Adamine_?” Deanna asks, looking around for water to force down Sammy’s throat, trying to remember what was so strange about how Cas spoke. “Who names their kid _Adamine_?”

“Why the hell do you think I go by Ada?” The girl grumbles, sounding like Sammy. “Nobody needed to know my name, until – that was the angel, wasn’t it? Until they showed up.”

“That’s the other thing the Bible doesn’t tell you,” Deanna says, and sighs. She’s sober now, and everything is horrible. “Angels are dicks.”

* * *

Alistair is on the rack, and Deanna’s holding the razor and the needle. It’s a reversal, but it’s also the fulfillment of a promise. Deanna wants to puke, but she’s good at this, just like all girls – good at forcing things down her own throat, bottling them up, keeping them quiet and storing the hurt for a glorious someday.

“For what it’s worth,” Cas says at her shoulder, so quietly it’s barely a breath. “I would do anything not to ask this of you.”

( _I had a choice_ , Cas tells her someday. _I didn’t need to ask it of you. But they knew I was getting close to you, and had I refused – well. I was getting too close to you. I didn’t want to let you go._

 _I guess we’re both selfish bitches, aren’t we,_ Deanna will say to her.

Cas looks at her with eyes that are mourning. Eyes that are empty. _Yes_ , she says, but she doesn’t sound like she believes it.)

“Go find Sam and Ada,” Deanna tells her. “Don’t come back.” She doesn’t know what it means about her that she doesn’t want Cas to watch. Doesn’t want Cas – _you have far more capacity for good than even you think_ – to look at her all ashamed, like Sammy does. Sammy thought Deanna was good once, too.

“She’s a pretty one, isn’t she,” Alistair tells Deanna. “Little angel in the trench coat – she still likes you, doesn’t she, Deanna?”

Deanna gets the needle under his fingernails. She whispers an apology to the poor soul whose body this used to be, but he’s not there anymore, whoever he was. One difference she’s noticed between demons and angels and how they wear their vessels – angels forget to take care of them. Demons just don’t care.

(Cas will show up in their motel room, many times. Deanna and Sammy both have guns under their pillows and trained on Cas before they’re even awake. Deanna, slightly more trigger-happy, shoots.

Cas’ll frown. She’s getting better at the whole vessel thing, except not really. She still doesn’t breathe. She misses a door and breaks her finger, and doesn’t bother to fix it until Deanna points it out. Sometimes her shoulders pop out of their sockets because she’s used to moving a back that has wings attached. She’ll stare at them, perplexed, and they just hang there until she realizes she needs to use an arm that’s gone mostly numb.

Maybe Deanna loves her because no matter how holy she is, she cannot help but be a monster too.)

Alistair starts laughing, and Uriel growls something when he realizes what Deanna’s doing.

“Stigmata,” Deanna tells Alistair, which she learned about during Sammy’s uber-Christian phase in high school. “You think it’s Heavenly enough for you to start burning?”

That’s the thing about torture, that Deanna also learned. It’s easier to do when it’s funny.

Alistair laughs, and laughs, and laughs. Deanna starts peeling the skin around his eyes with a knife dipped in holy water. She slides it under, layer by layer, slow and steady. She knows why she’s torturing him, but she also knows more than anything that this is for herself. 

“What a monstrous little girl,” Alistairs tells her. “I enjoyed torturing your father, but none more than you. He didn’t break, didn’t leave part of himself behind in the pit – you did. Boys grow up to be men, Deanna, and you girls just grow up to be scared.”

Deanna puts a syringe next to his eyes, then changes her mind. Better just to dig them out, and let him choke on holy water instead. She’s so full of pain, and anger, at everything. At Alistair, at John – at both, for she knows Alistair is just repeating what John used to say to her, because Alistair knows how to get under her skin. Of course she’s a monster. They made her a monster, her and Sammy both.

“You were the first seal, Deanna,” Alistair tells her, the drawl dripping through his words. “This apocalypse is all yours, honey.”

“Maybe I’ll just kill you now,” Deanna says, and then a weight slams into her back and the world goes dark.

(Ada will be there when she wakes up. _There’s something wrong with Sam. I thought demons couldn’t be killed, but she did it. She and the brunette._

 _What_? Deanna asks.

Ada stands up. _You think I don’t know the signs of addiction, De? There’s something wrong with her_.

Deanna will not say, _there’s something wrong with me, too._ Instead she says, _I’m sorry, Ada. I’m sorry you had to get dragged into this. Call Bobby, he might be able to help you. He might even be able to help you get back to school._

 _If you think I’m leaving now, you’re sorely mistaken._ Ada’s face is hard. _I don’t think I could even if I wanted to._

Another person Deanna’s fucked up. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again she will see Cas.

 _Why me, Cas_ , Deanna asks, voice hoarse. _Why me_?

 _Uriel was a traitor,_ Cas answers, voice even and emotionless. _You are the Righteous Man, and Alistair was right. You are the one who began this, and the only one who can finish it._

 _I’m tired, Cas_. It hurts to admit it, but she’s always trying to hurt herself more. She deserves it. _I’m tired and angry and I want my family to be safe._ It’s more than just Sammy, now. It’s Ada too.

 _They can be_ , Cas says. _They will be, once you do this._

Deanna’s full of anger. Deanna’s full of pride. _Why are you here, Cas_?

 _I – have doubts. About my superiors, about Heaven. But no matter my disobedience, you are still the Righteous Man, Deanna Winchester, you who we are meant to follow._ Reverence in her voice. _And your soul is so full of fire._ )

* * *

Ada’s the only one acting sane, now. Deanna knows this logically, but she’s also angry and terrified. A Prophet of God? Lilith? The way Sammy flinches when Deanna touches her, because Sammy’s full of demon blood and half the time Deanna’s hopped up on grace keeping her sober –

And isn’t that funny. Isn’t it just, because Sammy has always been the only good thing in Deanna’s world, always. Deanna’s the fucked-up one, full of anger and rage and Hellfire spitting at her steps. Sammy’s the one who was going places, with her genius mind and her Rosary and all the books she absorbed on mythology and law before she was nineteen.

(Deanna never figures out when she realized, really, that Sammy always flinched when she touched the Bible. That her hands shook and there was a slight burn where the Rosary rested on her bare skin, that the exorcisms made her wince and that she sang the hymns anyway.

_I have to try to be something good._

Deanna never figures out when she realized, really, that the boys she let fuck her never stayed long afterwards for a reason. They left with clawed red lines down their spines, and Deanna never wanted them to stay but sometimes she wished she didn’t feel the need to hurt everything that tried to love her.

_When a Righteous Man spills blood in Hell._

Isn’t that funny.)

So they’re losing their minds. Ada dyes their hair blue, because they can’t find a hunt and they are all, quietly, going insane.

Scratch that, Deanna thinks. Ada’s another good thing in their world, now, no matter how acerbic and cynical and rude she is.

Sammy’s twitching, gesturing wildly with her hands as she talks about a Sumerian legend, about descending into the underworld. The dye isn’t really sticking in her hair, not with how dark it is. She’s not quite Sammy but at least she’s there.

“After this,” Deanna tells Ada, “we gotta get you all tatted up.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sammy says. “You _really_ need an anti-possession tattoo.” At Ada’s raised eyebrow, she pulls up her shirt, showing where the ink sits along her ribcage right under her bra. Deanna nods; hers matches.

Ada grimaces. “Needles aren’t my favorite.”

Deanna laughs. It kind of grates out her throat, unused to the sound without cruelty. “Better get used to ‘em. Tattoos are sweet.”

“Yeah,” Sammy says. “There’s nothing more beautiful than putting art on your skin for the world to see, right?”

Deanna looks over at her sister, half-smiling. “I mean I guess. I just got mine cause they look cool, you know. Guys dig chicks with ink.”

Ada’s hand drifts over Deanna’s back. “Is that what this is?”

Deanna winces. “I got those a while ago,” she says. “Angel wings. Funny now, isn’t it.”

All three of them laugh a little, because really, _fuck_ their lives. Then Sammy’s phone dings and the moment is broken, and she says abruptly, “I’ll be back in just a minute.”

Ada works the dye through the ends of Deanna’s hair. It’s unexpectedly gentle. “Your head is disgusting,” she says. “Bobby called.”

“Oh,” Deanna replies. “You talked to him?”

“Yeah. He didn’t seem that surprised to hear from me, but he says he needs to talk to us.”

Deanna hums. She’s got a hangover, and everything still hurts from tangling with demons and angels. She hasn’t seen Cas in a while – she thinks she might be worried by that.

“Did you hear what I said,” Ada repeats, and yanks Deanna’s hair.

“Yes, I heard what you said,” she yelps. “Jesus, I’m not into that!”

Ada laughs, and for a moment they are content, and then there’s a raised voice from the bathroom.

“Ruby!” Sammy snaps, and then lowers it. “Come on… _please_.”

Ada untangles her fingers, scowling. “The sooner the better.”

They get sidetracked, though, by Deanna’s dreams, and by Jamie Novak. She is Cas, and yet not. For one, she’s blatantly lesbian, and flirts with all three of them like there’s no tomorrow. Ada looks like she wants to shoot herself, Sammy carefully inches away, and Deanna is unwillingly intrigued. But more than that, Jamie moves so fluidly, obviously a dancer, and yet when Sammy asks what being possessed by an angel was like, she goes completely still.

“It was like,” she swallows some of her sandwich, “like being chained to a comet.” She turns to Deanna, those eyes so _blue_ , and Deanna wonders if this girl will ever be fully human again. “She had something to tell you, I think, but I don’t know what it was.”

“Great,” Deanna says.

Outside, Jamie lights up a cigarette, and tells Deanna that she’s fucking with things she has no business to. Jamie’s human, and she holds herself so relaxed compared to how Cas had, but she is still unknowable and terrifying, and Deanna isn’t sure why. “You’re going to die, you know that, right? We’re all going to die.”

“Great,” Deanna says again, distracted by the way Jamie’s voice wrapped around the word _fuck_ like a prayer. “That’s great.”

Everything goes to shit after that.

Jamie runs back to her family. Deanna feels like crying again when she sees Jamie’s little brother, Cliff, taken by Cas too. But here’s the thing. Ada still doesn’t have a damn anti-possession tattoo, and suddenly there’s demons, and Deanna’s grappling with her little half-sister whose eyes are black like jet. She doesn’t know where Sammy is but she’s pretty sure it involves Ruby, and she’ll deal with that after she’s figured out how to exorcise Ada cleanly. She gets a knife to the demon’s throat, and then –

Jamie’s dying, a gunshot wound in her stomach. “Take me,” she pleads with Cas, in little Cliff’s body. “Give Cliff a life, please. Let my little brother live.”

( _Take me,_ Deanna tells Michael. _Let Ada and Sam live. Take me, you fucker._

She will not say please.)

“It will hurt. You will never die,” Cas says, voice emotionless and yet far too high in the tiny blonde boy. Deanna’s enraptured, but Ada’s still struggling underneath her, and _where the fuck are you, Sammy_?

“Do it anyway,” Jamie tells her, and then all that lithe gracefulness is replaced by _grace_ , as Cas throws themself in, as Jamie’s eyes light up unnaturally blue. She stands up then, the stab wound still in her stomach.

“Cas,” Deanna says.

“Move aside, Deanna Winchester,” Cas says – not Cas. This isn’t the angel who picked Deanna up off the floors of bars, not the one who dragged Sammy home even when she was high, not the one that made Anna tilt their head and wonder. This is Castiel, all rage and terror and _because God commanded it._ “There is nothing I need from you.”

“Oh, really?” Deanna asks, angry. “You told me you doubted – ”

“I have no doubts,” Castiel says peacefully. She throws back a shadow, and there are her wings and in the dark her eyes are glowing circles of blue. Sammy’s in the doorway, screaming like her own eyes are burning, like she can’t stand in front of the holiness of it. Castiel throws Ada against the wall, the last demon left standing, and Sammy makes a wounded noise and holds out a shaking hand. The demon swarms from their littlest sister, though not without dropping her on her arm with a crunch, and Castiel turns away, uncaring now, towards Sammy.

“Cas,” Deanna pleads, because she remembers those gentle fingers on Sammy’s forehead. “Cas, no, it’s Sam!”

“She is an abomination,” Castiel says, gently and madly. Her voice is hurting Deanna’s ears, rattling around at least three different sets of vocal chords. Sammy’s still crying, and Deanna doesn’t know if holier-than-thou Castiel has brought a contingent of more angels with her. Something blazes in her mind’s eye – the sigil Anna had shown them. Deanna tears open her palm because nerve damage doesn’t really matter anymore, and she draws it, gritting her teeth, and the maelstrom of which Castiel is the center flashes out of existence when Deanna slaps a bloody palm down the center.

“De,” Sammy groans.

Deanna glances around, stumbling to her feet and clutching her hand. She doesn’t know where Cliff went, but right now she’s more worried about her own sisters.

“De,” Ada says, sounding too much like Sammy, and Deanna wonders when she picked up that nickname. Wonders why it doesn’t sound wrong, like it does coming from everyone except Sammy.

“Yeah,” she says. And then, in her older-sister voice, “We’re going to Bobby’s.”

Sammy’s barely coherent, and Deanna kind of doesn’t want to know if her eyes are actually steaming or if that’s just a trick of the light, but she mumbles something when they move her. Ada’s quiet, face white and clutching her wrist.

“We really gotta get you that tattoo,” Deanna tells Ada, with nothing better to say.

Ada grits her teeth. “It was horrible.”

“You fought it, though.” _I didn’t know you could do that_.

Ada shrugs, but her shoulders straighten just a bit. They’re all so horribly codependent, living out of each other’s pockets, depending on each other to be happy.

Deanna says, “I won’t blame you if you leave.”

“Shut up,” Ada replies, kind of like she’s sick of their shit.

“I’m serious,” Deanna tells her. “You’d be better off if you just left us.”

“Would you – stop,” Ada says. “Look, _asshole_ , everyone I’ve ever loved has left me. It sucks.” She winces, trying to wrap her wrist, but her face is set in the same stubborn lines that Sammy’s are, sometimes. “So no, I’m not going to leave you.”

“Good choice,” someone says from the backseat, and apparently Deanna’s body has adrenaline left to give, because it shoots through her veins. A car honks at them as they swerve and she instinctively checks that Sammy’s still asleep, which is how she notices that it’s Anna in their backseat.

“Helluva time, Anna,” Deanna snaps to them.

"Who the hell are you?” Ada asks.

“Anna,” Deanna says.

“Haniel,” the redhead corrects.

“The angel,” Ada catches on. “Joy?”

Anna-Haniel nods. “You are well read, Adamine.”

“Would you all stop – ” Ada starts, but Deanna holds up a hand.

“What’s up,” Deanna asks the angel in the backseat. It might be kind of aggressive, but whatever.

“Castiel was forcefully dragged back to Heaven,” Haniel says. “Before she could regain her vessel. There is something horribly wrong, Deanna.”

Sammy twitches as they hit a bump. Haniel turns to her. “Is she alright?”

“No,” Ada replies.

Deanna grits her teeth.

Haniel reaches forward, gentle. They rest an arm on Ada’s wrist and it glows, fractured but healing – reminds Deanna of something Sammy told her about, broken pots repaired with gold. It doesn’t quite work, though, and Haniel sits back.

“You’re, uh,” Ada motions towards Haniel’s head. “You’ve got…something.”

Deanna glances at the mirror, and recoils. The side of Haniel’s skull is caved in like somebody took to it with a crowbar, red hair sticky with blood and brain-matter. The angel in question frowns, perplexed, and then says, “Ah. This is not a vessel, you see. I pulled a few strings.” And then the injury is gone.

Ada whips her head back forward. Deanna doesn’t blame her.

“Be careful,” Haniel warns, though her voice is soft like it is an apology. “No longer do things sleep, Deanna. You must understand. No matter what, they are already awake, and you cannot stop them.”

Then they’re gone.

“I’m really starting to hate that,” Ada says.

Deanna grunts. “Welcome to the club.”

* * *

Ada’s…way too much like them.

“You two need to be safe,” she says, and through the door her voice is trembling just the slightest. “I can do this, ok? I can do this for you guys. You need to be safe.”

(Deanna’s heart will always jump into her throat when Ada says these things. It all comes down to this.

_Please don’t leave me._

_Dad,_ Deanna wants to say. _You couldn’t even stick with fucking up one kid, could you. You really had to fuck up us all._ )

“Ada!” Deanna calls, but her steps are receding. She wonders if this is a trap, if this has always been Ada’s plan – no. Ada’s their sister. No. _Please, no_. “Ada!” Deanna yells, and pounds on the door, but there’s no way out. She turns to Sammy, who’s finally waking up. There’s blood on her mouth, a little clumped in her dark hair. Deanna doesn’t want it to be what she thinks it might be.

“De,” Sammy says. The bags under her eyes are so bad. She looks more skeleton than girl.

(The Winchester sisters have been self-destructive since they were born. That was how it went, being raised in a household where you should’ve been a boy. Where your face just reminded your father of his dead wife. Because that was always how it was – _my wife. My daughter._ It was never _your mother,_ or _your sister._ They were never allowed to have things their own.

Deanna learned to sleep with a gun under her pillow, and always took turns too fast. Sammy learned how to skip meals, and then Sammy learned how to leave.

Funny, that the pain was the only thing that could ever be theirs.)

“How long,” Deanna asks, after it’s been a few hours. She thinks she should go to sleep, but she can’t.

“How long what?” Sammy deflects, like Deanna can’t see right through her.

Deanna levels her a glare. “How long have you been getting that demon blood in your system?” She feels the ache in her bones, the wish for alcohol and maybe, deep within, for the grace Cas would use to get her sober. “What’re you even trying to do with it, Sam, level up or something? Gonna become more demon than human, at this rate, Jesus.”

Sammy’s angry. “I’m – I’m not trying to _level up_ , De, I’m trying to _kill Lilith_!”

Deanna snorts. “Yeah, well, apparently Ada’s gonna do that for us.”

Sammy doesn’t even deign this with a response. She sits against the wall, shaking, and doesn’t look at Deanna. Time slides by as Deanna tries and gives up on getting out of there. Bobby’s a smart sonofabitch, when he wants to be. Apparently, so is Ada.

(She’ll ask Ada later. _What the hell were you thinking_?

Ada slumps. _I don’t think I was,_ she’ll say bleakly _. I wanted to prove myself. There was something twisting around in my head, and I couldn’t make it stop._ )

Sammy goes ramrod-straight.

“Sam?” Deanna asks, hyper-attuned to her little sister. “Sammy?”

“Mom’s – mom,” Sammy says, her voice so very small. Deanna’s mad at her, so mad, but her limbs don’t even hesitate, carrying her over towards her sister. When she hugs her, they can both feel the sting. Sammy groans in pain, something burning, and the brand – Castiel’s handprint – on Deanna’s shoulder flares. Deanna just pulls Sammy tighter.

“Mom’s not here,” she says roughly. “But I am.”

“I’m sorry,” Sammy whispers.

Deanna doesn’t know if she can forgive her. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to leave her alone. She couldn’t, even if she tried.

Mom isn’t the only one who makes an appearance, as Sammy burns hotter, moving in Deanna’s arms and murmuring almost feverishly, talking to people who aren’t there. It’s terrifying, that Deanna can’t kill the things that are terrorizing Sammy. Then Alistair appears, which makes Deanna nauseous, and Jesse too.

( _He sounds like a good one,_ Deanna told Sammy, so long ago. _He…he respect you, and all that jazz_?

Sammy’s mouth had curved in a genuine, happy smile. _He’s…De, he gets it, he really gets it. And he’s so smart, like he can actually keep up with me, and he always listens when I need to talk. He’s…amazing. I never understood the idea that people could fit together like puzzle pieces, but I think we do_.

 _Y_ _ou sap,_ Deanna told her. She was happy for Sammy, though. She really was.)

"Shh,” Deanna whispers into Sammy’s hair. She doesn’t know how many hours it’s been, and she’s so tired. “Shh, Sammy.”

When she wakes up, the door’s open. Sammy’s gone and Bobby’s out cold. Deanna curses herself, and curses herself again, and that’s that. Both her sisters, gone after Lilith. Both of them, going to die. She feels bad, leaving Bobby on the couch unconscious, but she knows what her priorities are right now, knows what they’ve always been and always will be.

“Castiel!” She yells at the sky. “Get your feathery ass down here!”

It’s mostly a blur, after that.

“Do you swear allegiance to Heaven?” Castiel asks. “To the Lord God, to the holy plan?”

“As long as my family is safe,” Deanna replies.

“Then speak,” Castiel intones.

When Deanna does, there’s a grace-kick in her lungs, all of a sudden. She’s starting to wonder if she’s any better than Sammy after all, in the department of addictions that should not be theirs.

The room they put her in is a glorified cage.

“You bastard son of a half-bred whore,” Deanna tells the horrible one – Zachariah, she thinks. “You said my family would be safe.”

“No,” Zachariah says, smiling. He’s just another well-dressed old white man, and he may be an angel but he looks at her all the same. “ _You_ said your family would be safe. We agreed to nothing of the sort. You need to learn to read the fine print, Deanna.”

But then Castiel. _Cas_.

“Is there anything more worth fighting for?” Deanna asks her. Begs her. She might be crying, just a bit, trapped in this gleaming box while her sisters are out there and _damnit, Sammy_ , _why_? “Don’t you see? It’s not God, giving the orders. It’s just your bosses pulling the wool over your eyes, pulling strings so they can raise Lucifer. All they want is war, Cas. War, and suffering. Is there anything better to die for?” She hesitates. “Please, Cas.”

Castiel is a being of cosmic significance. Yet for some reason she looks Deanna in the eyes, and for a moment Deanna is drowning in them, in the splitting of the world – in how _blue_ they are, pale and fracturing like a cold morning sky in some lights, deep and incomprehensible like constellations at night in others.

Cas asks, almost wonderingly, “How do you still shine so brightly?”

When they find Sammy, it’s too late. Cas tangles with an archangel to defend the prophet of God; Ruby’s got Ada all strung along. Seems like Sammy finally came to her senses, but Ada’s already stabbed Lilith and made her angry and Ada doesn’t have freak powers on her side so of course Sammy finishes it off, and it’s the final seal but they don’t have a goddamn choice.

Deanna’s starting to realize that they never did in the first place.


	2. oh the devil's inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stop!” Deanna screams, shooting the angel. It doesn’t do anything. Her little sister’s still on the floor.
> 
> “Are we having fun yet?” Zachariah snaps at her. His form is flickering, and the words are breaking and splitting into chords of voices that tear at his vessel’s throat. “Are we having fun?”
> 
> Deanna’s so, so weak. She keeps saying no, but it’s getting harder. She’d give up the world for Sammy or Ada. She just never wanted to have to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im posting this instead of facing my responsibilities pls indulge me

The world ending is…a lot less of a big deal, actually, than things like Cas dying, and the angels actually wanting Lucifer to rise, and the fact that _Sammy_ managed to bring Lucifer back, and also –

“After this,” Bobby is saying, “you lose my number, kid. I don’t want to see you again.”

Ada freezes like a deer, and shoots a slightly confused look at Deanna, who is similarly frozen.

“He sounds off,” Ada says quietly. She’s walking on eggshells around Deanna, more concerned that Deanna will be mad than Sammy, whose current attitude is oscillating wildly between repentant and _I-don’t-give-a-fuck_.

“Yeah,” Deanna says, frowning. “Yeah.”

(When he’d heard about Sammy leaving, Bobby had called Deanna up. _What’re you doing, kid_ , he’d asked. His voice had been stormy, and yet exhausted. It was the way he used to sound when Deanna had to call him to pick John up from bars.

 _It’s fine,_ Deanna told him. _I don’t care_.

 _You know, I used to put you two in separate bedrooms, like your ma did_. Bobby said. _Always found Sam in your room, come morning_.

Deanna snorted. _Way to be cliché, Bobby._

_Look, idjit, I wasn’t finished._

Deanna wondered if she wanted him to finish.

_You remember the first time she went on a hunt? How that damn ghost threw her into a wall?_

Yeah, Deanna remembered. John had lost his shit, for one. It had almost seemed like he’d cared about them.

 _You sat by her bed all night long, kid. All night_.

Yeah, Deanna remembered. Sammy had looked so little in the bed, pale and bruised. It had been Deanna’s fault.

 _She’s done that every time since,_ Bobby said, voice gruff and soft. _No matter how much you two fought._

Deanna’s throat had suddenly closed up. _Thanks, uh, I’ll call you later, Bobby, ok_?)

“Just,” Deanna shakes her head. “Just trying times, I guess. Let’s go, Ada.”

They walk into the room, and Bobby and Sammy both snap up. Bobby’s eyes are cold, kind of, and Deanna wonders how she missed that – was he really that angry, over their whole chaos? Something in her whispers it: _maybe he’s done with your shit just like everyone else has ever been._

“Hey, Sam,” Ada says. “I’ll come do research with you. Michael’s sword, and the weird dogs, you know, it seems kinda like a riddle. It’ll be fun.”

Sammy shoots an imperceptibly distressed look at Deanna. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

So maybe they’re both walking on eggshells around her. So maybe Deanna’s also oscillating wildly between guilt and _I-don’t-give-a-fuck._

The realization that John had the Michael sword the whole time throws her off, though. By the time the world’s stopped moving under her feet, she realizes Bobby’s possessed and Magnus is here, in a new body. Sammy flies through the doors, full of darkness and righteous anger, and Ada’s right behind her, shotgun in her hands.

“Aw, Sam,” Magnus coos, while Deanna grapples with Bobby, who’s got a knife and a face so devoid of expression that it’s terrifying. “Isn’t so easy now, is it, without all the fun juice keeping you high in the sky?” Magnus says to Sammy. He cocks his head at Ada. “Finally got her a tattoo, though, so maybe you’re not as dumb as you look.”

Sammy can’t seem to expel the demon from Bobby, and one of Deanna’s hands is pinned. She kicks up, squirming like he always tells them to do when someone’s on them.

“No,” Sammy says. “But I can still do this.”

The ceiling fan crashes to the ground and Ada gets a few shots off, and Bobby stabs himself with the demon blade. Sammy advances on Magnus, and then he’s gone, and they’re rushing Bobby to the ER.

Sammy says, “I need to stay with him, De.” 

“Look,” Deanna says. “Whatever you’re thinking,” they all know what she’s thinking, “ _no._ That won’t help.”

“Staying here will,” Sammy tells her. “You and Ada go.”

Deanna doesn’t know if she trusts Sammy, still. But Sammy’s just as stubborn as she, so Deanna and Ada go to the storage facility, and then –

“You’re the Michael sword,” Zachariah tells her, gleeful. “You will be his true vessel, and his perfect weapon. You cannot comprehend the enormity of this.”

(Someday, a demon who is not a very good demon will tell them this: _part of the reason you are feared is because you have not been human in a very long time. You reek of it._

Deanna will grunt at him, Ada will tilt her head, and Sammy will step forward. _Oh yeah_?

The demon gestures with his hand. _You smell like rot. Full of angel, full of demon, should-have-died and didn’t. Your bodies were built for it, but_ , he laughs. _It is abhorrent, how you are touched by Heaven and Hell and yet you are, somehow, the opposite of creation._ )

Maybe, a few days ago, Deanna would have said yes. Now, she just spits in Zachariah’s face.

“Oh, De,” Ada mutters – rather snarkily for the girl who tried to light Zachariah on fire the first time she met him – before her skin is flaying itself from her bones, before her organs are inverting themselves and her eyeballs are beginning to soften and drain from their sockets like water.

“ _Stop_!” Deanna screams, shooting the angel. It doesn’t do anything. Her little sister’s still on the floor.

“Are we having fun yet?” Zachariah snaps at her. His form is flickering, and the words are breaking and splitting into chords of voices that tear at his vessel’s throat. “Are we having _fun_?”

Deanna’s so, so weak. She keeps saying no, but it’s getting harder. She’d give up the world for Sammy or Ada. She just never wanted to have to. What was it, Zachariah had said? _A glorious paradise, wrought by a glorious victory in a glorious war._

When Cas arrives, slamming fists and knives and low, harsh, words into the angels, Deanna wonders how many times Cas will save her. 

( _You ever think about leaving her,_ Ada asks someday, a little angry and a little bitter over a small argument. _When she gets into this shit._

Neither of them know that Deanna can hear them, even if she’s not quite sober enough to process it. She will have bruised knuckles from breaking seven fingers and two noses.

 _Of course I do,_ Cas says, which, ouch. _But she is Deanna._

Ada will just snort. _Doesn’t excuse it._

 _No,_ Cas responds mildly. _Nothing excuses our actions, Ada. But to love is to forgive._

 _You’re too nice,_ Ada says.

 _In fact it is the opposite, as you well know_ , Cas will reply. _But I have learned how to be. And that is, in part because of all of you. Because of her._

Deanna will definitely not be sober enough to process it.)

Cas is spitting all this stuff to them outside Bobby’s hospital room about _God_ , and Deanna’s amulet leading her to him, and how she is cut off from Heaven _,_ and then in the middle of it all she tilts her head and says, “Ah.”

The grace-high surges through Deanna, and the reminder of it in conjunction with Sammy’s pained groan is enough to make her think of the panic room and want to puke. Meanwhile, Ada just looks mildly itchy.

“What was that?” Their youngest sister demands.

Cas says, “Enochian sigils, carved into your ribs. Angels will no longer be able to track you.” With what might be faint embarrassment, she adds, “I think that in light of recent events it will be beneficial.”

Ada opens her mouth.

“No,” Cas says, “I will not teach you what it says, because you do not possess the necessary number of vocal chords.”

Ada looks appropriately disgruntled.

“If you’re all done lollygagging,” Bobby says, looking equally disgruntled, though on him it is certainly more well-deserved. They all glance up at him, all guilty – all for different reasons. “Ellen called. Town full of demons.”

Cas turns back to the three sisters. “I must go,” she says. She reaches out a hand, and for a moment Deanna loses her breath as Cas’s small hand brushes across her collarbone, but Cas turns the caress into a careful snatch of the amulet. Then she’s gone.

“Sure,” Deanna says, to empty space. “Yeah, go ahead.”

They find War in a small town in Colorado. The whole thing is a goddamn mess – it’s hard to trust Sammy, when she’s looking at demon blood like that, and it’s hard to trust Ada, when she’s got those black eyes again. Ellen’s there, and Bobby’s friend Rufus, and Jo too, buzzed blond hair and a brand new septum piercing right alongside the other eight. But there’s not much time to focus on how nice it is to see them, not with how everyone’s turning on each other and she’s unable to see friend from foe. Not with how War wears the body of a man in a suit and a smile like a dark alley, not with how he turns them on each other, and they play right into it. It’s easy to see enemies everywhere if you’re always looking.

“And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from Earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him,” Sammy murmurs, almost to herself.

Except, as it turns out, the red horse is a red Mustang, and the sword is a machine gun, and when Deanna cuts his fingers off he screams just like everything else does. Screams just like all the ones in the Pit did, all the ones who thought they were unbreakable before Deanna got to them too.

“Little violent, there,” Ada observes. It’s judgmental and younger-sibling-ish and kind of annoying, which, they haven’t even known her that long.

“Hold on,” Jo says, and Deanna can’t believe how nice it is to see him. He’s got a new tattoo, curling up his neck, and Deanna wonders if Ellen okayed that one or if it was done out of spite. “This is cool and all, but who the fuck is she?”

* * *

“Maybe I don’t need you watching me every step of the way,” Sammy snaps at Deanna.

Ada’s retreated, probably to get some sleep, or maybe to text Jo, whose number she got sometime after they defeated War himself and sometime before a freak weather phenomenon took them to the northernmost part of Michigan. Ada’s been less snarky since she locked the two of them in a panic room and tried to go after the First Demon herself, just like Sammy’s been quieter, and it’s throwing Deanna off a little bit. But honestly, she’s still kind of pissed off so it’s mostly just an interlocking triangle of guilt.

“I’m not – watching you,” Deanna retorts. “Well, ok, I am, it’s just that – ”

“You don’t trust me,” Sammy says.

“Of course I don’t!” Deanna almost yells. The water of Lake Superior laps gently by her feet. It’s a serene location for a good, old-fashioned, Winchester-sister catfight. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting you leave.”

“I want to earn your trust back, De, because I’m sorry, because we _both_ fucked up, and I want to fix it! But you’re not _letting_ me do anything!”

Deanna almost turns and punches her, and wonders for a moment if she should just let Sammy go. Would she feel better? Would it be better, not to have to worry about Sammy picking back up another addiction? Would Ada follow her? Would Deanna be free on her own, travelling and running from angels? Would she be better off, less likely to say ‘yes’ to her apparently-huge role in the apocalypse, if her sisters weren’t around to be used as incentive?

( _Then leave_ , John roared at Sammy.

And she had.

Deanna had wanted to say, _don’t leave me here alone._ But she was always emotionally stunted, and she didn’t. Asking Sammy to stay was something that she couldn’t do. Asking anyone to stay, was something she couldn’t do. John had never even wanted to stay, apparent in all that he did, and so of course Deanna had always known it was her that was the one who fucked things up.)

Deanna sets her jaw. “Just – don’t. I need someone to…to remind me. You know. Other than the brat back there.”

“Hey,” comes Ada’s muffled voice, and a thrown bra. It looks dirty, and it catches Deanna in the face, which, _thanks_. Sammy’s lips are a flat line. Neither of them can quite find the humor in the situation. Deanna doesn’t even know what she’s asking, just knows that if Sammy goes again something inside her will break.

“Be here, Sam,” Deana says. “To remind me.”

“Remind you what?”

Deanna swallows, and tears the words out of each other, taking them from the place that still stings when Sammy’s eyes are bitter coffee rather than gleaming dull, taking them from the place that knows this is selfish and doesn’t care. “That things still deserve to be saved.” Then she gestures a hand out to the lake, to the wide sky, to the endless expanse of forest they’ve stopped by, and laughs, trying to make it sound flippant instead of broken. “Besides, where can you go?”

(Deanna had never understood what hunters said about America. John always waved it off, said they were talking nonsense, said _other countries are just as lawless as us._

But America had always had a wildness to it. It shone through in some of the indigenous stories Sammy had read about, when Deanna sat down to listen, but those were stories of a more beautiful place. The America now destroyed everyone differently, yet everyone had to survive all the same. The America that Deanna and Sammy had been raised in was the kind of place that John fit best in, a country built by lonesome souls and muffled voices. The two of them feral and forever-running, one foot out the door, a knife in their hand and a prayer on their lips. They weren’t what America was quite trying to destroy, but it would all the same.

Sammy had always prayed to God, capital-G, but Deanna had just prayed. She didn’t know who she was praying to. She didn’t know who was listening. Of course, it was after Sammy had left that Deanna encountered her first god.

The thing was not shaped like a human, though as soon as she saw them Deanna wondered why she had ever thought they would be. She didn’t know enough about myths, about stories, about religion. That had been Sammy’s thing, all the history.

 _Isn’t it weird,_ Sammy once said. _That some things we call religion, while others we call myth_? _Aren’t they just, like, different points on the same circle_?

Deanna coughed up a flower, and wondered if it’d be better if she just bailed on this case. Her dad would never know, she justified, and maybe she was already chafing under his strict rules anyway. This god wasn’t hurting anyone; this wasn’t even a hunt, just some people in the town who were killing each other because they wanted to, and this inhuman thing that merely existed nearby. Stories, Deanna knew, had power. Something amused came from the thing, which was now only human-shaped because Deanna had thought about it very hard.

 _Gods are here to make the world look like something,_ Sammy said once, under-eye bags and a headache cause she was still getting through her first hangover. _I think that’s it. I think gods give the world a form. I think you just pick the one that helps you stay the sanest._

 _So what you’re saying is nothing exists,_ Deanna had replied, because theology was not her strong suit.

Sammy shrugged. _Or everything._

Deanna struck a deal with this god, primal and old, because this was not her business and she was, quite honestly, terrified. The amulet that hung around her neck never let her forget it, that the things that were terrifying were beautiful too.

Maybe they were beautiful because of it.)

“Unseasonably warm,” a local tells them, shaking their head. “We don’t even get up past the eighties during a hot summer, usually.”

“Too cold,” another says. “I swear I saw snow yesterday. Only a few inches, but still.”

“World’s ending,” a little girl tells them, jet black hair and golden-brown skin, jean shorts and a tank top, eyes that are vibrantly and entirely green. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

The three of them pause.

“Well,” the girlthing amends. “Your world is ending.”

“Get out of that girl,” Deanna finds the voice to say, but she’s not certain of it. There’s something flickering around the girl’s edges like the air above asphalt on a hot summer day.

“Am I a girl?” The girlthing quirks her head. “Are you sure? You know, just because the angels and demons need bodies to mess around down here doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”

Deanna aches for a drink, for the world to make sense.

“Are you a trickster?” Sammy asks.

The girlthing laughs. “Not quite, but I’ll still help you out. This is your apocalypse, yes, but I’m not sure it’d be so fun for the rest of us.”

“Our apocalypse?” Deanna echoes.

“You Christians,” the girlthing says. “The world’s not yours to tear apart, you know.”

Ada finally speaks up. “I’m not Christian.”

The girlthing looks at her, eyes narrowed. There is no pupil, no black or white. Just the greenness of it. “Alright, baby Winchester, so what do you believe?”

Ada shrugs. “I don’t know yet.”

“That’s the right mindset.” The girlthing nods approvingly. “Just for the little wildcard here, there’s an archangel in a ring of fire, over yonder. It’s a gift for you three, but be careful of the flame –it’s not meant for mortal touch.”

“Thanks,” Sammy says, her voice lilting up at the end.

The girlthing does finger-guns at them, and then hops on her bike, and then she bikes straight into the lapping teeth of the cold lake, out towards the fog and the freighters. The three sisters stand there for a moment and watch. Deanna feels very much like the singular time she tried acid.

“Let’s,” Deanna says, and makes an aborted effort to gesture to the trailhead that marks ‘over yonder’. “Let’s go.”

“I wonder if Bobby would know who that was,” Sammy says. She’s still talking kind of quickly, but not as manic as she used to get when she was drinking demon blood. Deanna does and does not want to know what she’s on instead. Hopefully it’s something less harmful, like the fumes of the nail polish she keeps peeling off her nails. “I can’t think of what deity that would be, not with how much we’ve been focusing on Christianity recently.”

Deanna throws her hands in the air. “Who the fuck knows.”

“Bobby’s with Ellen and Jo,” Ada says. “I wouldn’t ask.”

There is, indeed, an archangel in a ring of fire. He hisses and spits at them, and after they look at him for a little while Deanna calls Cas, who appears, takes one look at the fire, and flinches.

“Where did you find this?” Their resident angel demands. “This is not holy fire.”

Ada shrugs at her. Sammy and Deanna don’t have a good answer. Their threshold for what is weird has gone significantly higher since the apocalypse began. Cas keeps glancing back at the fire. The heat of it is actually rippling away at her human form, and momentarily Deanna thinks she can see a great many wings, and eyes, and horns.

“Great,” Deanna says. “Just great.”

“You killed me,” Cas says to Raphael.

“I tried,” Raphael tells her. For an all-powerful archangel, he seems fairly put-out by the fact that he didn’t succeed. He continues to insult the four of them in equal turns.

“Yes,” Cas says, her brow furrowing. They need to get her a haircut. “You did. Do you know where God is, then?”

Raphael is ignoring her, though, and peering at Sammy and Deanna. He says, “God’s dead. Instead, you get those two, don’t you?”

Cas frowns. “Dead?”

Sammy also frowns. “Us two?”

“Dead,” Raphael says. “ _Dead_ , Castiel.” For a moment, his voice sounds like John’s. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out.” He waves a hand at the Winchester sisters, and apparently he’s the only angel who doesn’t mind being blunt, it just comes along with shorting out all the electricity within three hundred square miles. “Michael’s sword, Lucifer’s sword. You’ll say yes someday, the both of you. This has been planned for thousands of years. Funny, isn’t it?”

* * *

(Zachariah will send Deanna to the future, the world overrun by the Croatoan virus. He will say, _look what will become if you do not say yes. Look, and understand._

Zachariah’s a dick.

Deanna’s future self has hair cut short, so no one can grab it. The world is full of demons and full of plague, full of people running and full of people hiding. But most terrifying of all is the complete lack of Ada and Sammy, how the Deanna of the future does not even mention them. Just barks out orders with natural authority, shoots one of her own soldiers in the back of the head, and cuffs Deanna to a wall like this is normal. And Cas – Cas is human, in what Deanna knows to be her own clothes, with hickeys on her neck and the smell of weed on her breath and a semi-automatic in her hands.

 _You aren’t you, are you_? Cas actually giggles. _How curious._

But Deanna watches how her future self draws Cas close, the fallen angel’s stick-thin form that moves so much more languidly than Deanna’s own Cas ever has. Future-Deanna has more tattoos, and a hardness in her eyes, and Deanna finally asks.

 _Where’s Sammy_? _And Ada_?

Cas watches her, gaze still unnerving even if she’s stoned out of her mind, and then puts a hand on future-Deanna’s shoulder. It wraps over the handprint-scar possessively, the same way future-Deanna, short and even more muscled than present-Deanna, snaps at the men whose eyes rest too long on Cas.

 _Mission in Detroit. They didn’t make it out_ , future-Deanna says. And that’s that.

The people in the camp mutter to each other. This world is so hopeless, so damned. Whole states have been destroyed in some kind of enormous war, and everyone’s got a hungry, skittish look in their eyes. Deanna feels completely alone, without Sammy or Ada tagging along, until Cas corners her one evening.

 _Who sent you here,_ Cas asks. _From when_.

Deanna’s thrown off by this Cas. Mostly because this is future-Deanna’s angel, not hers, and Deanna needs to stop interacting with her all the same, but also because Cas looks at future-Deanna so softly. Even when future-Deanna and this Cas fight, as they often do, they are still looking like the other is the most precious thing left in this horrible world.

Deanna says, _Zachariah. Uh, just after Lucifer rose._

Cas blinks. _Oh. I see._

Deanna’s a little scared. Deanna says, nonsensically, _that was my favorite flannel._

Cas raises an eyebrow, and she presses a quick, smoky kiss to Deanna’s cheek, lips dry and chapped. Deanna’s heart nearly beats out of her chest. _You’ll have to make the right choice, De._

 _Cas,_ Deanna says. _What happened to you_?

Cas looks back at her. Her eyes are hard, too, like light shining through a shattered window. She’ll laugh, high and shrill. _Life, Deanna Winchester. Life._

Later, future-Deanna will tell her. But perhaps Deanna will have already guessed.

 _Sam said yes,_ Deanna says. Her eyes are cold. The angel wings on her back are scarred over, as if someone took a knife to them. Maybe she did. Seems like something she’d do. _Sam said yes to Lucifer, and I said no to Michael. So you know what he did_? _He got Ada to say yes._

Deanna finally understands. The states that have been ruined – they are battlegrounds of an angelic war.

Future-Deanna holds up the Colt. _You need to say yes. For Sam, for Ada, for Bobby, for everyone._ Her face is a mirror of Deanna’s own pain. They are so similar, and yet so different. _For Cas, too._

Deanna shakes her head, keeps shaking it, feels like the world is falling apart. She waits for the urge to hurt, the urge to drink, but mostly she just feels sick.

 _That’s why you’re coming tomorrow,_ future-Deanna tells her. _To see what will happen if you keep saying no. You say yes, maybe you lose yourself to the angels. But you pick Sammy and Ada, this is what happens. You say no, and you lose them anyway._

Deanna stares at her, stomach sinking.

Future-Deanna loads the gun. _For God’s sake, De. Isn’t the world worth more than your Goddamn sisters?_

Future-Deanna leads them into a trap. She does not apologize. All of them die.

 _Deanna,_ Sammy says warmly, except it’s not Sammy. Lucifer in Sammy’s body is something Deanna knows will haunt her nightmares – the full white ensemble, so unlike Sammy’s jeans and acid-washed church shirts, the evenly shining smile, so unlike Sammy’s crooked grins. _I apologize,_ Lucifer says. There is viscera on their boots. _Had I known you were coming, I would have cleaned up a bit._

Deanna wants to vomit, listening to Lucifer’s cadence in Sammy’s voice. This is the literal Devil, in her sister’s body, telling her lies and half-truths in a voice that seeps into her head. A voice that makes her want to open her arms and welcome the Devil in.

 _Do you know why I fell, Deanna_? Lucifer asks, and spreads their arms to the sky. Thunder crashes, and rain spatters the ground. _Because I dared to find fault, in my Father’s creation. Because I dared to love my family, more than anything else._

 _I’ll kill you,_ Deanna swears.

Lucifer half-shakes their head, which is, so horribly, a Sammy-motion. _This is your destiny,_ they say. _No matter what you do, Deanna. You will always, always, end up here. With me._ Lightning heralds the arrival of another archangel, and Lucifer smiles, calmly and gleefully. _Company has arrived. I suggest you take a step back._

The body that crashes to the ground is not Ada, not anymore. Ada, Deanna remembers desperately, is not Michael’s true vessel. Michael’s grace is seeping out her – their skin, pouring down their cheeks like radioactive blue blood, eyes full of light that promise nothing but annihilation. Blonde hair swirls like the rays of light extending from saints’ heads in old iconography, like a halo, and they are covered in gore as Ada’s body falls apart at its very seams.

 _Lucifer,_ they thunder. One of their legs is snapped, but they stand like it does not matter because it doesn’t, wielding a sword that drips with holy oil and fire, shoving themself in front of Deanna.

Lucifer laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and when they two meet in battle, the earth itself quakes.)

“Credo,” Sammy says, and Deanna jerks awake.

Cas is…somewhere, probably, after she showed up in their motel room with bruises and information about the demon who was their case, before she disappeared again, before they moved on. Sammy’s driving. Ada’s sitting shotgun, and Deanna’s stretched out in the backseat. She almost starts crying, at the sight of her little sisters playing their weird word-derivative game, in a world that is not falling apart. The future is hurling through her head, the vision of the angels overtaking her sisters. How it had all been to further Zachariah’s plan – to make her say yes. All the reasons she, probably, should.

Cas had told Chuck, right before Raphael had turned the world inside out with light: _we’re making this up as we go along._

“Uh, credit, for one, and all those. And credulous,” Ada says. “Dude, that’s so easy, come on.”

Deanna swallows. She doesn’t want to choose.

* * *

Jesse Turner makes Deanna feel even worse. Ada tries to talk to him, and Deanna, but it’s Sammy who gets through. Sammy, the demon-girl, who gets through to the antichrist. An antichrist. Whatever.

“Hey,” Sammy says softly. “I get it.”

He looks up at her, with that not-so-little expression. “Do you?”

Sammy shrugs, and then she holds out a hand, pained lines around her eyes. She doesn’t even look at Deanna as a stuffed animal flies across the room and into her hand. A crack spiderwebs across the wall. 

After Jesse is gone, they walk back to the Impala. There’s tension, between Cas and Sammy, and Ada is talking loudly about something or other – some story her mom used to tell her about the Tooth Fairy. Deanna’s glad it’s getting easier for her to talk about her mom. She wishes she could think about John without recoiling.

When Cas leaves, Sammy speaks up. “Don’t, De.”

“I’m not – ”

“Look, do you want me to leave? Cause I can.” Sammy’s getting angry, now, and Ada gets in the backseat, slamming the door closed. “If you’re just going to keep looking at me like I’m – a freak, then fine. If I can’t earn back your trust, then I don’t want to stay.”

Deanna’s hand snaps out, thinking of Detroit, thinking of Lucifer-as-Sammy. “ _No_.”

Sammy pauses. Her shirt says, _Hell is empty and all the devils are here_ , which they’d found in a William Shakespeare gift shop in Nevada two years ago and laughed at for twenty minutes. Life was easier, then. Her hair is getting longer, past her chin now, and the eyeliner over one of her eyes is shaky. When Deanna doesn’t say anything more, she replies, “Give me a reason. To – to stay.”

Deanna hates talking about her emotions. “Look,” she says. “Can’t we just…go back to normal, like we did before? Fine, maybe you’ve got psychic powers now. But still.”

“Normal didn’t _work_ , De,” Sammy snaps. “It never really did.”

Deanna leans her head against the Impala. She wishes, slightly hysterically, that Sammy wasn’t six inches taller than her. “Don’t leave.”

“Why not?” Her face is pleading. “Give me a reason, De.”

“Just…I need to be able to – to protect you.”

“You can’t protect me if you keep fucking blaming me for _all_ our problems.”

Deanna spins. “I’m _not_!”

Sammy scowls. “Sure.”

“Fine,” Deanna admits, gruffly. “I’m…still a little pissed. But – I don’t blame you. It was.” She grits her teeth; she did, after all, break the first seal. And Ada did, after all, stab Lilith first. “A collective effort.”

Sammy leans back against the Impala. “So you want me to stay.”

Deanna feels the silence stretch out. “Yes.”

“So can we try the whole trust-as-a-two-way-street thing? Can you stop treating me like dad did?”

Deanna opens her mouth to object, then changes her mind. John isn’t her favorite person right now either. Instead she says, “Do we have to?”

Sammy raises her eyebrows and does the nodding thing, like _no fucking shit, Deanna_. “Yes.”

Deanna huffs.

“Shit changed,” Sammy says. “So we did too.”

“Fine,” Deanna tells her. “Just – just. I – can try to get better at trusting you. We’ll work out the vessels thing.”

“We’ll figure that out,” Sammy says. “There has to be another way.”

“Yeah,” Deanna replies. _Oh, Sammy._

When they slide into the front seats, Ada is on her phone.

“Get off that,” Deanna says, starting the Impala. “It’s going to rot your brain.”

“You’re literally thirty,” Ada replies. “Stop being so curmudgeonly. Jo says we should come back. Bobby’s got some news.”

“Is he ok?” Sammy asks, voice softening.

“He’s got some news on the Lucifer and the apocalypse front. The Colt? Whether or not he’s ok, Jo says Ellen’s keeping him in line, but…”

“Yeah,” Deanna says. “Yeah.”

Ada pauses. “Also Jo’s going stir-crazy,” she admits. “I think it might be good for him to go on a hunt.”

Unfortunately, they get sidetracked when Sammy and Deanna wake up in the back of the Impala without Ada. After frantic searching, they acknowledge that the case staring them in the face might be more important.

“She’ll be ok,” Deanna tells Sammy, and herself. She tries to avert the what-ifs – Ada can take care of herself, wherever she is. Maybe Jo had called her up. _Maybe she’s just sick of you._

They’re very thrown off without Ada. They’re so used to her, standing behind them threateningly with a shotgun she mostly knows how to use, armed with her offhand medical knowledge and quietly sarcastic comments. There’s an extra beat with their third sister, in the way that she relaxes things, and Deanna and Sammy, even with their recent understanding, are still tense. But then things start getting weird. They don’t have phones, for one. This lady’s talking about the _Hulk_ , for another. And Sammy can’t access her freaky psychic shit, which –

“The Trickster,” her little sister says grimly, and holds up candy wrappers.

“Aw, _motherfucker_.”

The series of events that follow are some of the weirdest Deanna’s ever had. They’re in TV land, so they end up on a fucking game show, which is awful, and then a _sitcom_ , which is worse.

“Cas, dude, I am _so_ glad to see you,” Deanna tells the dark-haired angel when she shows up, ruffled and slightly bloody. Even Sammy agrees, and Cas and Sammy usually have a pretty passive-aggressive relationship. This says a lot about the craziness of their lives, currently.

“You must be careful,” Cas warns. “There is something more powerful here – ”

“Ah, ah, ah,” somebody says.

“ _You_ ,” Sammy growls.

The Trickster is a petite girl, shorter even than Deanna or Cas, maybe five feet at the most. She’s curvy, golden-haired and golden-eyed and drop-dead gorgeous. She sucks on a lollipop, grinning, like this isn’t the umpteenth time they’ve thought she was dead in the ground. “As hot as that tone is, Sam-bam, I’ve got to deal with the pretty little angel first.”

She throws a hand out, and Deanna and Sammy both find themselves restrained. Deanna frowns as something fizzes through her – _this is not the time to be figuring out new kinks, De_ – and Sammy makes a noise of pain, the bonds no doubt rough against her bruises.

“Hey, Castiel,” the Trickster says cheerfully. “Can’t have you ruining things quite yet.”

“Leave her alone!” Deanna yells, but it’s too late. With a snap, Cas disappears.

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” the Trickster says flippantly. “It’s you two I’m concerned with.”

“Where’s Ada?” Deanna asks immediately.

"Oh, she’s somewhere in here. Haven’t seen her yet?” The Trickster glances around. “I wonder where she went! Maybe she fell down a rabbit hole. Or maybe she got out, left your two sorry asses behind.” She sticks a tongue out at them, bright blue. “Guess we’ll never know.”

“You’re lying,” Sammy says.

“Pfft,” the Trickster replies. “Of course I am. Your lil’ sis is all safe and sound. I’ve got a soft spot for the youngest siblings.” She snaps again, and they’re sitting down at a table with tea. “So let’s have a little chat, shall we? Tea, anybody? Or – vodka?”

Deanna, though she would enjoy being drunk, is not that stupid.

The Trickster shrugs, and picks up a glass that’s suddenly chock-full of pills. She knocks back enough to kill a normal person, and then turns to Sammy, the glass already refilled. “Want any?”

Sammy shakes her head, furious, and glances at Deanna.

The Trickster smiles, a little blood dribbling from her nose, mirroring Sammy on her Ruby-era highs. Angels, Deanna has found, tend to do that. Demons make your worst memories. Angels recreate them. “Was worth a try,” the Trickster says. “Though maybe I should’ve given some to De. Everyone’s a little happier when they’ve got oxy in their system. Or, in your case, some good ol’ demon blood.”

“Bitch,” Deanna starts to snarl, but the Trickster waves a hand and she’s choking on water. She bends over and coughs it out as Sammy shouts and struggles.

“Oh, calm down.” The Trickster sounds bored. “I have a vested interest in keeping you alive.”

“Yeah,” Deanna says hoarsely. “And why’s that?”

The Trickster slams her hands down on the table, cheerfully unhinged. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Come _on_ , you’re both smart cupcakes – at least, Sammy is. Sam-bam-thank-you-ma’am, how do you get out?”

Sammy’s eyes are guarded. “We have to play the part.”

The Trickster, leaping up and pacing, snaps at her. The sisters flinch, but nothing happens, just an even wider grin on the Trickster’s face. “ _Exactly_! You have a role, you two Winchester girls. Michael and Lucifer, the two brothers, the Righteous Man and the Girl King. C’mon, Deanna, you’ve already seen the future. Your part in this apocalypse is coming, and you cannot keep fighting it. You two started it, you two finish it, so let’s _get it_ _over with_.”

Sammy’s stuck on one bit though. “De, you’ve…what?”

“Oh-ho, you didn’t tell her!” The Trickster cackles.

Deanna pleads with Sammy through her eyes – _I’ll tell you later, I promise_ – and she will. “It’s fine,” she says aloud. “So whose side are you on? Heaven, or Hell?”

The Trickster’s eyes glow with barely suppressed rage and madness. Deanna can’t figure out what it reminds her of, until –

“You’re no Trickster,” Sammy says, back from being the Impala – which, what the _fuck_ – and tossing a match on the holy oil.

The girl inside is flickering, her body warping and fusing around _something_. She cannot get out.

“So who are you?” Deanna asks.

The Trickster deflects. “How’d you figure it out?” She asks. “Honestly, even I’m impressed.”

“That tone,” Deanna says.

“Yeah,” Sammy agrees. “That’s how you talk about family. Especially if you don’t like them.”

Deanna glances at her, but jerks her head back as the Trickster throws her head back, just laughing. “So,” Deanna says. “Who are you?”

The girl comes back down, lit by holy fire. For a moment, the world fractures a little bit around them, the warehouse cracking around her like hot glass in snow. Her eyes glow, and grace starts to run down her cheeks, rivulets of molten gold, and suddenly Deanna understands.

“Gabriel,” she says. “My name is Gabriel.”

“No wonder,” Sammy breathes out. “That’s why you left Ada out of this.”

“I told you I had a soft spot for the baby sibs. I am one, after all,” Gabriel says. Her mouth is crooked, still a half-smirk. Her eyes hurt to look at. All of her hurts to look at – _do not be afraid,_ said this angel to the shepherds and the flock and the Virgin Mary. Deanna shouldn’t be phased by this, not anymore – angels who make the ground bleed, who make the sky quake, angels who are holy and golden, who have track marks in their arms. _Do not be afraid_. 

"At least Ada stands up to us,” Deanna says to Gabriel. “You ran away from Heaven, and you’re still running.”

“And where will Ada be, at the end?” Gabriel asks, her voice sliding into something terrible, the kind of voice that shakes rooms. “That’s all this is. I want this to be _over_. There are two siblings, and they are brothers or sisters. There are two siblings, and one follows the father, but one does not. One rises, and one falls, and they fight, and that’s all there is, even where once there was love. You have no end other than this one.”

Deanna thinks about the future. “No,” she says, stepping in front of Sammy, glancing back at Sammy. “No. There has to be another way. Give us Cas, and take us to Ada. We’re going to find another way.”

* * *

Of course, just like Gabriel said, they can’t just kill Lucifer with the Colt. Of course, Ellen has to die. Of course, nothing in their lives can ever go right. _Detroit, Sam – we have an appointment._

Jo is sitting in the back, head in his hands. “I need to leave,” he finally says. “I can’t – I need to get out of this.”

Deanna doesn’t know what to say. When John died, she’d never even considered she could get out of hunting. She wonders if she would have even if she’d known it was an option. _Of course not. There’s never another choice._ She wonders when her father’s voice in her head started sounding like the same asshole-angels who are trying to convince her to let their general wear her like a stripper dress.

“Jo,” Deanna starts, but Jo’s hand snaps up. His nails are painted black. He had barely gotten to say goodbye to his mother, just heard the hellhounds baying, just a quick embrace and a shove and a building blown to pieces.

“Ok,” Ada says quietly. She and Jo had been getting on like a house on fire, really, which is yet another thing Deanna has destroyed. Yet another person Deanna has killed, sure as if it were by her own hand. How can she be considering saying no, now? How can she be considering saying yes? How is she supposed to do this, to weigh the many and the few, to weigh the world which has shown her its worst, and the sisters who have kept her going? How is she to just give up herself?

“We won’t stop you,” Sammy says. “I know how you feel.”

Jo looks up at her. One of his lip piercings got torn out, in the fight. His mouth is bloody, and even his blond curls look defeated. He told her so many times how much he wished he could get out from under his mother’s thumb, and yet here he is.

Deanna, after this, is going to find a bar and burn it down. “Jo,” she says hoarsely. “Just don’t be a stranger.”

(When they’d met, neither of them had been the people they were supposed to be, probably. Both of them had been laboring under the weight of expectations, and lines that could not be crossed. They drank whiskey in the dark in the Roadhouse. They’d had sex before, and they’d fought before, but in that moment it was just Deanna and Jo. He was a spitfire, always arguing with Ellen and giving himself stick-and-poke tattoos – he’d given one to Deanna, too. There was rage there. It was familiar.

 _Where’s that one from_ , Jo asked, gesturing to a silvery triangle of scar tissue on Deanna’s arm.

Deanna traced it, the hairlessness of it. _Lit myself on fire._ A silly accident. That was what she told Sammy. That was what John told anyone who asked, the few weeks after it’d happened while it healed, gross and peeling. She’d been clumsy. She’d been stupid. She shuddered, just drunk enough to relax herself into something approaching vulnerability.

 _Should’ve killed him yourself,_ Jo said, because he never had and never would respect John Winchester.

Deanna straightened up, echoing his posture, echoing the boy-ness that he had. She didn’t answer. She loved her father. She hated her father.

 _Whatever_ , Jo said. He rolled up his jeans, revealing knives in sheaths and rune-tattoos on his ankles, and a mass of old scarring covering his bony knees. _When I was in college I went to a club, and I wore a skirt, cause it was fucking pretty and cause people told me I couldn’t._

Deanna could see him fitting in there – flashing lights and dancing crowds and haunting in the way that empty parking garages were at night. And Jo, skirt spinning over his stomping boots and lanky boy-limbs.

_Some guy cornered me in a back alley. I wasn’t the first one he’d done this too, obviously. He was trying to get the skirt off, but he didn’t really care what else he cut._

Deanna knew how this story ended.

Jo laughed, sharp like a razor. _I killed him. My mom taught me how to hide a body so nobody finds it, and I did. Guess she was right, although she’d probably be mad if I told her. Sometimes I think facing your fear just means killing your nightmares before they kill you._

They both took another shot.)

Jo is gone, and Bobby is dull-eyed, and the house is empty.

“And I looked and saw a pale horse,” Sammy mumbles. “And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed close behind.”

Ada didn’t know Ellen all that well, really, but she still cries. Ada’s the best of them, Deanna thinks. 

Deanna goes outside, late at night. She doesn’t know if Sammy’s home. Probably not – probably out getting high or drunk, like Deanna wishes she was. “Cas,” she says quietly. “Cas, I know you’re listening.”

Cas coalesces out of starlight and the smell of thunderstorms, out of rain and electricity and indeterminable things. “I do not exist at your beck and call,” she says.

Deanna rubs her eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

They stand there in silence, for a few minutes.

“You found God yet?” Deanna asks. What a weird question. It sounds like something a preacher would ask you, or one of those big billboards – _have you found God yet_? – not something you’d ask a literal fucking Angel of the Lord.

Cas’s tone is surprisingly frustrated. “No. He is nowhere, yet he is everywhere.”

(They’ll figure it out someday. So God is an alcoholic. So God is a deadbeat. So God is just like every other father, leaving his kids behind to pick up his mess.

Cas has Sammy’s Bible. Ada’s dead asleep from tussling with a vampire, and Deanna’s drinking a beer and listening to Sammy and Cas, who will at this point have some kind of fragile relationship.

 _This is wrong_ , Cas says offhandedly, of a passage.

Sammy freeze. _Are you allowed to say that_?

Cas will shrug. _Does it matter anymore_?)

Finally, Deanna asks. “Did you mean it?”

Cas tilts her head. “Did I mean what?”

Deanna’s voice comes out small, smaller than she would ever let herself be in front of her little sisters. “That I’m…good.”

“Deanna,” Cas says. She puts a hand over the mark on Deanna’s shoulder, which flares with heat. Deanna trembles, feeling the weight of many eyes staring straight at her. “You are the Michael sword. Though this is in part due to your bloodline, it is not just that. You are the Righteous Man, and you forget that it was I who found your soul in Hell. Even in the pits of the damned, you shone like a star. You have always been born to save others.”

Deanna shakes her head. “I couldn’t save Ellen. There’s so many people I couldn’t save.”

“Not everyone is meant to be saved.”

“Who gets to decide that, though? It’s – ” Deanna shakes her head, thinking about Sammy, thinking about John, thinking about how her father used to say _the monsters always dies at the end of the story._ Thinking about how Sammy’s started to stand up and say _maybe they’re not always a monster. Maybe sometimes they’re like us_. “It’s not that black and white.”

Cas doesn’t respond, and when Deanna looks up at her, her face is not so serene; rather it is mournful, tipped towards the heavens. “No,” she finally agrees. “I suppose it is not.”

Deanna, for a moment, cannot understand it. Cannot understand this celestial being, who still stands next to her and tells her that she deserves redemption. Cannot understand this girl, who still stands next to her and has rebelled against everything she’s ever known.

Deanna cannot understand why anyone would do this for her. Cannot understand how she has earned it.

She coughs. “Are you – you know. Alright.”

“Being cut off from Heaven is,” Cas sounds so distant, “terrifying. Incomprehensible.”

“I’m sorry,” Deanna says. It’s such a frail response. _I’m sorry._ It’s such a cop-out.

* * *

Famine gets Sammy with the demon blood, and Death gets to Ada with her mother, and Bobby shoots his wife. The world is falling apart, and they’re falling apart, and Cas is growing increasingly desperate in her search for God.

Deanna’s starting to think there is no God, and then Zachariah gets to them all.

Deanna thinks, at first, that this is Heaven. There’s an insidious whisper underneath it, but Deanna, who has never known happiness – not really – finds herself in a home with a mother who plaits her hair and sings gently. It’s quiet. There’s no Sammy, no dad, but is that so bad?

( _What do you want_ , something asks them, someday. A djinn, or maybe not.

 _To be normal_ , Sammy will admit with pain in her voice.

 _A family_ , Ada says.

Deanna will be the last to speak, the answer yanked out of her. _A home._ )

There’s a voice on the radio that belongs to Cas. Deanna’s mother has a blank smile and an empty room. Was this what home was? Deanna can barely remember it, can barely discern where her father’s stories and the reality began. She’s met her mother – how strange a statement that is – and this pale reflection is not Mary. She can’t imagine how this would be paradise, and she wonders for a moment if she will ever have a home, she who has only known the road that stretches ahead. Zachariah’s face fizzles into existence in front of her, and there’s the touch of knives and cosmic power, blood on her skin. Deanna closes her eyes, because this, this _pain_ , feels so much more familiar than any facsimile of a loving house ever could.

This angel meets them in front of stained glass, in a small chapel. This is the kind of place Sammy loves, the light shining on the wooden floors in pale shades of color. Deanna’s never been comfortable in churches, hiding her grease-stained hands in her pockets and hoping nobody’s noticed she hasn’t brushed her hair today, but somehow, Sammy still looks around with a little bit of awe. This is the kind of religion Sammy likes. The kind that will forgive her, no matter what. 

“So God’s a no-show,” Ada concludes. She doesn’t sound as disappointed as the rest of them.

Joshua blinks. He’s more human, but maybe that’s just how he’s appearing to them. “I suppose you could say that.”

“Great,” Deanna says. “ _Great_.”

“I know,” Joshua replies, looking around at the beautiful windows. “He is finished. It is admirable, I think.”

“Admirable,” Sammy starts, then lowers her voice in the hush of the chapel. “ _Admirable_?”

Deanna grabs her sister’s arm.

“Hasn’t He done enough?” Joshua asks, turning on them. He’s soft edges and worn shirts, but his eyes are cold and empty, like the sun on a winter day. He is just as much an angel as all the rest, he simply hides it better. “He brought back Castiel for you, He saved you from annihilation when Lucifer rose. I think He deserves to take a step back.”

“He created this _world_ ,” Sammy says. “Can’t He save it?”

Joshua shrugs. “You started this apocalypse. He doesn’t want to stop it, and neither should you.”

And this – this is what finally breaks Cas.

“She’s at a bar,” Ada says, later.

“God – ” Deanna leans her head against the window of the shitty motel room they have. “I’m gonna go get her.”

Ada snorts. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. Where’s Sam?”

“Talking to Bobby, I think.”

Deanna glances at her. “Are you – ok.”

“Don’t hurt yourself there,” Ada replies. “Are you?”

Neither of them answer.

It’s dark, the power grid of the city fritzing out as it does now. The neon signs on the strip clubs and bars buzz, and Deanna just follows the sparking until she finds where it seems to be centered from. There’s a preacher outside, crying things about their doom of fire and salt. His eyes flicker over faces, desperate and searching. People stop and listen to him. Everybody’s just waiting for the end to come.

Deanna’s been thinking about ‘Heaven’. Thinking about how Sammy just wants to be free, and Ada just wants a family to stay with, and neither of those things involve her. Thinking about how it’ll be all her fault if they die, if Lucifer takes Sammy, if Michael settles for Ada, if they have to be dragged back into this mess because of Deanna’s inability to make a decision for herself. Deanna’s inability not to be selfish. Because no one’s coming to save them now – not God, not anyone.

She walks up to him as he’s taking a sip of water. She asks, “You know who I am?”

His eyes widen, and he falls to his knees, clutching at her leather jacket.

“Oh, get up,” she says, angry. Not angry – tired. Very, very tired. She wonders if she should just say yes, and get this all over with.

“Deanna Winchester,” somebody else says, and Deanna looks up just as five feet and three inches of angry angel slam her back and into the alleyway.

“Hey, Cas,” Deanna grunts. “Was looking for you.” 

“Were you?” Cas snarls. “Or were you just looking for an angel to roll over and submit to?’

Deanna squints at her. Cas is holding her off the ground and against the brick wall with ease, and there may be bruises on her throat tomorrow, but Deanna can’t find it in herself to care. Instead she looks at her angel, whose hair is a mess. Deanna’s never looked at her eyes so close like this – they’re Jamie Novak’s, kaleidoscopic and crystal, but they’re Cas’s too, that unearthly blue. “Are you _drunk_?”

“Oh,” Cas says, “like you wouldn’t do the same.”

“You want to hit me, Cas?” Deanna goads her. “C’mon, I deserve it. It’ll make you feel even better than the drink.”

Cas looks at her, and Deanna thinks, just for a minute, that she will. Then Cas drops her. Cas is only an inch or two shorter than her, but the disgust in her expression is enough to make Deanna feel small. “Nobody deserves this pain, Deanna,” she says. “Not even you, as despicable as you are.”

“I’m – _I’m_ not the one who’s drunk while the world is ending!”

Cas growls, and the light at the front of the alleyway pops. “I sacrificed _everything_ for you, Deanna. Are you going to prove me wrong?”

Deanna half-smiles, bitter. “Probably.”

Cas glares, and opens her mouth to say something, but then –

“Hello, girls. Trouble in paradise?”

Cas makes another terrible noise that sounds more storm than human, and turns away. Deanna tries not to miss the warmth of her.

“Zachariah,” Cas says, low and dangerous. “You should not have come.”

“Oh, we’re not here for you, little runaway,” Zachariah tells her, smiling, though he sidesteps her like she is something repulsive. Something horrifying. “We were invited, didn’t you hear? The Righteous girl is finally giving in.”

“The Righteous Man,” Cas corrects. “Leave, Zachariah, or I will be forced to take drastic measures.”

Zachariah flicks his hand, and several other angels march into the alley, bodies stiff and warlike. They grab Deanna, and she yanks her arm away but does not, exactly, resist. “What are you going to do, Castiel?” Zachariah asks. “You’ve almost fallen, haven’t you?”

“Almost,” Cas agrees. She’s actually swaying a bit. “But as Adamine says – not today, bitches.”

Multiple things happen at once. A carving knife slides through the front of Zachariah’s face, and his eyes flare white with light as he screams. Cas’s angel blade materializes and she slices through her palm, pressing a bloody hand to her own chest. Deanna gets thrown against a wall by the blast, and shuts her eyes as the angels scream, as something strips back from her bones, as the world turns to nothing but light and sound.

There’s a slow clap, and Deanna opens her eyes.

“Wow,” Gabriel says. “You guys really are dramatic.”

Cas is looking down at her chest, where the sigil is carved bloody, right under her collarbones. Deanna doesn’t know where her scarf went, but she looks bare and too-small without it. Her eyes roll back in her head, and Deanna stumbles forward to catch her before she hits the ground.

(That scar will never leave, and she will seldom go without her scarf again. No matter what, Cas will always be branded with the mark of what she did to her siblings.

Deanna will find her in the bathroom, staring at the mirror. She’s too thin, Jamie Novak’s body so old and worn-through. She’s wearing a lacy bralette that sort of fits her, and she’s beautiful. Spread across her collarbones is the lumpy scar of the Enochian sigil. If Deanna looks too hard, she can still see it as it was in the dark of the alleyway. Angry, blood beading, the skin torn-up and ripped with a knife that had not been sharp. Nothing elegant about it.

 _Hey_ , Deanna says. _Hey, shh._

Cas will press a hand to it and cry.)

Gabriel watches Deanna, standing illuminated at the front of the alley. Zachariah’s really dead this time, his body laying on the ground amongst the litter and the rotting food. The burnt outline of his wings on the ground is edged in silver, but already puddles are washing it away; there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.

“You killed Zachariah,” Deanna says to Gabriel the archangel, who wears ripped jeans and a crop top and neon combat boots.

“Yep,” Gabriel says, popping the word. “Too early, I guess, since little sis there went ballistic. You kids are really losing it, aren’t you?”

Deanna ignores her, stumbling under Cas’s deadweight. “Why are you here?”

“Gee, what about thanks, Gabriel, for killing lord dickwad over there? Gee, Gabriel, you are _absolutely_ the best.”

Deanna glares.

“Sheesh, tough crowd. Well, to put it frankly, I’m here because your sister sent me to find you. Rightfully so, as I can see.”

“Since when do you do Ada’s bidding?” Deanna frowns. “And why didn’t the sigil banish you or Cas?”

Gabriel ignores the first question, but Deanna’s too busy hauling Cas up to notice. “That sigil is outdated,” Gabriel finally says. “It only works on angels who are – pure, for lack of a better word.”

“Cas is still bleeding,” Deanna finally notices.

“Cas isn’t really an angel anymore.”

“And you’re not either?”

Gabriel snorts. Gabriel moves so much, compared to every angel Deanna’s ever met. They’re all still, trying to copy humans but failing in every way. Gabriel is unlike any of them, with her red-rimmed eyes and her fluttering hands. “Nice one, Deanna,” she says. “Nice one.”

(Someday, Deanna and Gabriel will talk. Deanna will have drunk a frankly ridiculous amount of wine, and Gabriel will have cocaine and powdered sugar dusted across her fingertips and under her nose. None of the sisters who usually stop them from doing this will be there; neither of them would like to think about the reasons why.

 _Doesn’t that hurt_ , Deanna asks.

 _Everything hurts_ , Gabriel replies, in the weirdly formal way she gets when she’s very out of it. _But nothing hurts more than the holiness that I am._

 _Drama queen_ , Deanna says, articulating carefully.

Gabriel will snort. _Whore._

But Deanna asks eventually, because Gabriel is an ally or maybe a friend, now. _The holy fire_?

 _That burned,_ Gabriel admits bitterly, because she and Deanna pretend to hate each other but they don’t, not now. _That burned worse than anything had in a thousand years, and part of it was because it was me. It was angelic._

_You’re an angel._

_Not really._ Gabriel tilts her head back. _I’m still an angel in the way that you are still mortal. Deeply, deeply, wrong._ )

"You fucking idiot!” Sammy shouts at Deanna as soon as she comes in. “I can’t believe you – I thought you said we’d find another way!”

Deanna puts Cas on the bed, gently lays her and hopes she can rest. “I didn’t actually – first of all, there’s _not_ another way!”

“There has to be another way,” Sammy retaliates. “There’s _always_ another way!”

“Jesus Christ,” Ada finally yells. “Would you _shut up_!”

They both oblige, surprisingly, which appears to amaze Ada as much as it does them. She blinks, and then points at Gabriel. “She’s got an idea.”

“Oh man, don’t throw _me_ in the middle – ”

"For the love of God, Gabriel – ”

“Blasphemy! Blasphemy – ”

Ada rubs her eyes. “ _Gabriel_.”

Sammy frowns. “Ada, are you ok?”

“I’m _fine_.”

Gabriel, having gotten very close to Deanna without her even noticing, snorts. “Like calls to like.”

Deanna shoves her shoulder, which is like punching concrete. She grits her teeth and tries not to show it in her face; from Gabriel’s smirk, the angel knows.

“Just haven’t been sleeping well,” Ada tells Sammy. “Just – dreams. You know. Zachariah.”

“Well,” Gabriel says cheerfully. “Good for you, he’s dead now.”

Sammy and Ada gape at her.

“Yeah,” Gabriel says. “And I do have a plan, but first you two,” she points at Ada and Sammy, “better check up on Cassie there, and Deanna and I are going to have a nice little chat.”

Deanna opens her mouth to protest, but the archangel forcefully drags her into the bathroom and locks the door. Then she turns around, eyes that insane gold. They’re eyes like photographs Deanna’s seen of lions, intense and terrible, amber and black, echoes washing through them of wind in the desert night, of trees creaking in old-growth forests. In the washed-out light of the motel bathroom, she is so very inhuman that Deanna can’t imagine how they ever thought she was.

“I don’t do girls,” Deanna says, because she has chronic foot-in-mouth disease, and also because she doesn't.

“Oh, great, that’s all you can come up with.” Gabriel rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to fuck you, girl wonder, you’ve already got an angel stamped on your soul.”

“What – ” Deanna starts, but Gabriel cuts her off.

“Listen to me.”

Deanna suddenly finds she couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. She glares instead.

“ _Listen to me_ , Deanna.”

Deanna listens.

“Do you know what you need to do?”

Deanna’s stomach sinks.

“You do.” Gabriel’s eyes flare. One of the bulbs in the light above the mirror flickers and goes out. “This is me saying, Deanna, that you need to do it.”

Deanna swallows. She nods.

(Someday, Deanna will sit down next to Sammy. Sammy holds an icepack to her eye, and Deanna’s got a broken arm.

_She was playing us like a fiddle._

Sammy’s face will be contemplative. Gabriel and Sammy are friends now, in a strange way, like actually friends. _For a little while, yes_.

 _She told you to say yes to Lucifer_?

_Right after she told you to say yes to Michael._

Deanna laughs. It’s funny now, because the world didn’t end. _Goddamnit._

 _I don’t think she was on Heaven or Hell’s payroll in the first place_ , Sammy will say thoughtfully. _But I think she switched sides, at some point in there, talking with Ada._

Deanna raises an eyebrow.

Sammy shrugs. _She liked the world, right? So the world’s side. Which is, I think, our side._ )

Gabriel sits them down, and explains the rings of the four Horsemen. Cas is knocked out for most of it, and Deanna keeps glancing at her. But Sammy’s serious, and Ada’s serious, and Gabriel is as serious as Gabriel gets, so they listen. Deanna knows this won’t work – Gabriel as good as told her. But she can pretend, for Sammy and Ada. They’ve already got two of the rings. She knows she’ll have to say yes, knows that there’s no other end to that, but maybe, possibly, she can trick Michael and Lucifer into following her back to Hell.

“You should be getting a call from Bobby in,” Gabriel checks her watch. “Oh, five minutes or so. I pulled some strings, made his life easier – or harder. That’s up to interpretation. But I gotta skedaddle now. Unfinished busines with some old friends, if you know what I mean.” She winks at Sammy.

“Running away?” Deanna asks, because that’s what it looks like.

“Leave it,” Ada says, and this leads Deanna back to the fact that she’s still not entirely sure how Ada managed to wrangle an archangel into helping them.

Gabriel shrugs. “I’m not the only one running away.” And then she’s gone.

* * *

“Goddamn Pestilence,” Ada winces out. “This is the absolute worst.”

“It’s _asthma_ ,” Deanna tells her. “And you’ll be _fine_ , you big baby.”

“At least you’re not dead,” Sammy agrees, for once. She looks annoyed by herself, and all of them are carefully not talking about how she stabbed Pestilence’s demon friend, and how her eyes had gone sharp when the demon’s blood sprayed in her face.

“This is horrible,” Cas says, from the backseat. She both sounds and looks like an angry cat, especially with the massive amounts of gauze they had to put on her chest. She is breathing too much, like for once she actually needs air in her lungs, and her eyes spark every few seconds, like those time lapses of supercell thunderstorms. She is a star collapsing in on itself, and Deanna, who starts fights for a taste of grace and who has never, really, been righteous – Deanna cannot help but think her beautiful.

“We know,” Ada tells her. “You’ve already said so at least four times – move your legs over, holy shit, how do you take up so much space when you’re so tiny?”

“I am not _tiny_ ,” Cas starts to snap.

“Please,” Sammy says, “both of you, please be quiet.”

Cas turns her head and looks out the window, like one of those dogs who ignores their owner in order to pretend they didn’t hear them.

Deanna winces. Bad comparison. She hopes Cas isn’t reading her mind right now.

“Do you think Pestilence meant it literally?” Sammy asks Deanna. “’It’s too late.’”

"What, you think they meant it symbolically? Metaphorically?” Deanna tries to make it a joke, but it comes out flat.

Sammy makes a face.

Deanna knows what Pestilence meant. They’d looked her right in the eyes as they said it. _Too late. The end of days is upon us._

Deanna almost jumps as Sammy exhales loudly, pointing to where a town has fallen into the ground. It takes a bit of looking, but Deanna realizes that the ground has split open along a fault line, and swallowed down the buildings and the foundations, the earth a hungry maw.

“I think she meant it literally,” Ada says.

The destruction only gets worse the closer they get to Bobby’s. When they do, they find him with Crowley.

“Oh, great,” Deanna says, wondering if punching the King of the Crossroads wouldn’t be such a bad idea either. “More demons.”

“Excuse you,” Crowley says prissily. “I am not just ‘demons’.”

“Your body is rotting,” Cas tells him.

“Your body is dying,” he replies indignantly.

They are both correct. Crowley is the only demon Deanna has met that has maintained a body this long, other than possibly Ruby. Said body is, more or less, a well-dressed corpse, though out of the corner of one's eye it is hazy like fog under parking lot lights. He smiles smugly at Cas, revealing a mouth half-black, and Cas bares her teeth at him in return.

Bobby grimaces and explains the deal – his soul for the location of Death. Deanna’s _pissed_ , but she mostly just wishes, privately and to herself, that she’d already given in to Michael. That Bobby too didn’t have to sacrifice himself because Deanna’s too weak. Also that she didn’t have to see a picture of Crowley frenching with her sort-of-uncle.

“Great,” Ada mutters, after they’ve planned, or what counts as planning with them. “Because splitting up always goes so well in the movies.”

So Deanna and Crowley go to Chicago.

“You think we should stop?” Deanna asks. They drive past a town that has one of those large, creepy billboards: _Where Will YOU Spend Eternity_? There’s a man hanging from it, swinging in the light of the rising sun.

“Why the hell would we stop?” Crowley asks irritably, fiddling with his phone.

“The end of the world doesn’t mean we should stop helping people.” She doesn’t know why she said ‘we’. It's been getting worse recently, something bad on the news every time they look, and some of it is just the end. Sure they can do stuff about the Croatoan virus, but the rest of it? Hurricanes and earthquakes and people flinging themselves into the ocean? Deanna can't fight that, can't kill that. “Monsters are probably having a field day and all, what with the chaos.” 

Crowley glances up, and catches sight of the hanged man. “You think that’s a monster.”

Deanna makes an unacknowledging noise.

“Deanna,” Crowley says. “Sometimes people are just people. You’ve been hunting so long you’ve forgotten: sometimes people are just people, and sometimes they’re just horrible.” He snorts. “Otherwise, _I’d_ be out of business.”

Deanna looks away. “Don’t know how I could forget.”

Crowley raises his eyebrows. He’s despicable, and yet she’s marginally more comfortable around him than any of Heaven’s holiest. “It’s the bloody apocalypse, righteous girl. We don’t have time for side quests.”

“Stop calling me that,” Deanna snaps.

“Girl? Or righteous?”

“Righteous.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” Crowley’s snort turns into cackling laughter. “You, darling, are the funniest thing that’s happened in _decades_. The whole story is positively mad, and you – you’re the best part! Do you think there’s any more ways the angels could have fucked you over? Any more ways they could have _possibly_ screwed you up?”

Deanna pulls out a gun and shoots him. His body doesn’t have blood left to give, but he grumbles and mutters and sigil-tapes it back together, all the smoke and skin that flakes away. It works well enough to shut him up.

(The thing that gets forgotten, in the following days, is that Crowley and Deanna have a hesitant sort of understanding after this trip. But nobody likes talking about that, so instead they focus on the fact that Cas and Sammy come back no longer hating each other’s guts.

 _When did you two actually start liking each other_ , a slightly tipsy Deanna asks her sister and her best friend. _Because for a while there –_

 _Ugh,_ Ada will reply. _Don’t remind me._

 _Look,_ Sammy says. _The apocalypse was imminent._

Ada rolls her eyes. _And you were full of Christian self-hatred._

 _Cas_? Deanna asks the dark-haired girl.

Cas shrugs. Her falls from grace, plural, will have become less of a touchy subject, by that time. _We were far more similar than we had thought_ , she says. _Also, I could get drunk._

 _Jesus fuck_ , Ada responds, _could you get drunk._

Both Cas and Sammy will look minorly guilty.

Deanna raises an eyebrow.

 _I was,_ Sammy says, taking a deep breath. _Missing the high. So I took Cas to a bar, and we both got hammered._

 _Ridiculously so_ , Ada grumbles. _I had to come and pick you up, and then deal with Cas puking up what was probably blood, and give you painkillers, and the whole time you were both mumbling –_

 _About absent fathers,_ Cas will interrupt quietly. _And the corruption – the rebellion, of disobeying that which one has been raised to revere._

Sammy will laugh. It’s not quite broken, but breaking. _We were both abominations, at that point, weren’t we_?

They will all carefully avoid what else Sammy and Cas’s bonding time during Deanna’s Death-chase had resulted in. They will all carefully avoid what happened next.)

The only thing Deanna can really grasp, with Death, is that he has a nice face.

“Sit,” he says. He is the friend you greet in church, he is the man tucked in the corner of every library, he is the face you see before you slam closed the ambulance doors. He has a calm voice, and a nice face. He is the end of all things.

Deanna sits. There is not really another option. She is the only person in this entire restaurant who is alive.

Death motions to the pizza. “Eat,” he adds.

“Uh,” Deanna says. “I’m – I think I’m good, for now.”

Death raises an eyebrow. His eyes are not cold, not harsh, not cruel. They simply glide over Deanna’s face. They do not care about her.

Deanna takes a slice. “Do you plan on killing me, uh – sir?”

Death blinks at her. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about him, in comparison to angels or demons or monsters, is that if Deanna were to see him in a crowd, she would simply look past him.

“You are an ant,” Death tells her. “You are smaller than an ant. Imagine, Deanna Winchester, what you would do, if suddenly you found an ant attempting to speak to you, and if, for no apparent reason, the ant was also a smartass.”

The pizza tastes like cardboard in Deanna’s mouth.

“You are insignificant,” Death says. “You mean nothing, in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps you will hold Michael, yet he is nothing more than a candle compared to God.” Death raises his eyebrows. “And someday I’ll reap God, too, Deanna Winchester.”

Deanna’s voice is hoarse when it comes out. “This is way above my paygrade.”

“You are so far out of your depth you cannot comprehend it,” Death responds. “But so is Lucifer, and I do not appreciate being chained to a toddler throwing a tantrum, yanking me around to do his bidding.” He motions to his pizza, though it is unclear whether he is referencing how good it is, or the approaching mass extinction of a city full of three million people. “Even here.”

“Don’t you want them to die?” Deanna asks.

“I am inevitable.” Death takes another bite of his pizza. “Now or later, it doesn’t matter. In the end, everyone will return to me.”

Deanna has never been terrified of a being quite so much as she is by this one.

“There are conditions,” he says as he hands her his ring. “You will do whatever it takes, to put Lucifer away. _Whatever_ it takes.”

Deanna swallows. “I know,” she says roughly.

* * *

Saying yes to Michael is worse than being chained to a comet. Saying yes to Michael is like being inside the comet, like being the sun and the moon and the earth which it destroys, all at once. Deanna may have been made for Michael, may be his true vessel, but her mind still cannot fathom the memories, nor the power. Millions upon billions of years within this being, and Deanna is nothing more than a speck of dust. She has no more power than a speck of dust, either.

“We do all sorts of things for our family,” Michael says gently. Their voice is John’s, then Mary’s. It echoes through her head. There is no Zachariah to ferry her between, no angels in crisp suits. Simply her and the archangel whose voice she knows better than her mother’s. Their voice is warmth and song, light and laughter. It is horrible. It is everything she has ever known. That is the worst – that Michael is _her_. That she is Michael. The obedience to the father, the anger at the sibling, the unflinching loyalty and the ability to ignore the discomfort at the orders one is given. This is within them both.

“Yes,” Deanna replies. “We do.”

Death’s ring is far away, with Bobby, with her sisters. Ada had told Deanna, just a bit – the amount of demon blood Sammy would have to drink in order to power Lucifer. How Lucifer might already know about the rings, in fact. How Detroit was set in stone. How everything was set in stone.

Ada didn’t tell her all this. But Deanna can infer. She knows what she has to do.

Deanna is standing in the middle of a cornfield under a sky full of stars when she gives herself over to the archangel Michael. Maybe there is an ending other than this one, but Deanna doesn’t know it. She never has. She’s locked inside her own head, forced to watch. All she can hear is noise, is screaming, but she’s forced to watch. Michael wants her to see. Her sisters – she wants to tell them, that all she’s ever done, has been for them. It stands to reason that even this would have to be too.

“Hello, sister,” Lucifer says, standing in the graveyard, standing under the sun. “Must we do this?”

There’s some of Sammy’s exhaustion in their voice, and Deanna would like to focus on it but she cannot, not with Michael at the wheel. Instead she can only see the darkness bleeding out of Sammy’s soul, the Morningstar who holds her in their grasp. They shine through Sammy’s eyes, cold and unfathomable, but also superimposed over her tall form is many wings roiling with feathers like teeth, sparking and gleaming.

For a moment, Michael too is weary of this endless fight. Memories swirl through Deanna’s – their – head, of stars collapsing and harmonious choirs, of grooming feathers made of intangible things and the once-time when laughter was joyful. Deanna cannot escape it, forced to stay at the forefront of their mind as she is, and the memories start bleeding together. They’re not so different, are they? Not after all. Not after everything.

“I am my Father’s child,” Michael-and-Deanna replies. “And so I must follow what he has ordained.”

Impatience bleeds from Sammy-Lucifer’s frame, though Deanna-Michael doesn’t know why.

 _Saint Michael the Archangel,_ someone, somewhere prays, _defend us from battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil_ –

“Hey, assholes!” Comes the yell, and both of them turn as the Impala screeches up.

The first one out is Castiel. Michael-Deanna’s eyes alight upon her, because she is a curious case, because for them to look upon her is to see something warped – _how holy is the angel when you remove the holiness_? Michael-Deanna is not sure what this being is, whose grace had been cut off and dying, yet now having somehow fulfilled her heavenly orders she shines with the grace of a seraphim around her tiny body. But there is no order to it, there is chaos and rebellion threaded through her being, in all six of her wings which are singed with Hellfire and edged with silver, in the skeleton of her vessel whose cracked star-bright bones are engraved with wards against her own kind, in rage-filled eyes that spin over her body, of which many are blue but many more are silver and blinded by Heaven’s wrath. _How Godly is the angel when they lose their faith in God_?

Then out comes Ada, hair braided back, and next to her is Gabriel. Gabriel steps forward like she has no other choice. Gold and silver and black – they stand in a circle, graces snapping at each other, mingling and hissing.

Michael-Deanna smiles. “I always knew you would come home.”

Gabriel does not smile, does not laugh. “There’s other ways,” she says, and her voice is tinged with – desperation, Michael-Deanna notes with satisfaction.

“There is no other way.”

“Hate to find myself agreeing with Lucy,” Gabriel starts, “but there really – ”

Michael-Deanna’s blade flashes out, and they slit Gabriel’s throat. _May God rebuke him, we humbly pray_ , the petitioner says.

Castiel the seraph and Ada are rummaging around, and Ada lets out a cry. “Hush,” Michael-Deanna says, and peacefully holds them still.

Lucifer-Sammy doesn’t stop her, just watches. They don’t seem to mind; they always liked the bloodshed.

“I had hoped you wouldn’t do that,” Gabriel says, and both the archangels turn towards their wayward sibling.

Lucifer-Sammy laughs abruptly. “Now you see, Gabriel, little sister made of mischief. Heaven is worse than Hell, isn’t it. There is a place for your tricks, with me. Ushering in a new dawn, at my side.”

“Can’t you see?” Gabriel shakes her head, and this about-face would surprise Deanna if there was any Deanna left to surprise. “I’m not on either of your sides – I’m on _theirs_.”

But Michael-Deanna is sad, which is too shallow a word to encompass the millennia-old loss they are made of. “And I had hoped you wouldn’t say that.” Then they are flinging a wing towards the apparition of Gabriel and spinning backwards, stabbing a knife into the real girl at their back. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” Michael-Deanna says, pushing the knife deeper into the chest of their sister, crunching through bones like glass and lungs that are not used.

Things become very loud, as Gabriel screams out a word that frees the seraph and Ada, as Lucifer-Sammy’s eyes grow hot and wrathful and suddenly very _human_ , as Michael-Deanna is consumed – the grief Deanna feels, knowing the death of a sibling, knowing how it hurts to be the one holding the blade, which directly opposes Michael’s complete resignation, that this is right and this is good, the unwavering belief they have in that which they must do.

Ada holds up the rings, yelling something. The world begins to swirl – Gabriel’s last bit of chaos. Michael-Deanna’s thoughts coalesce once more into harmony. They throw Castiel into a tree with a brush of their wings which will burn, and then break something in Ada Winchester’s ribcage that leaves her coughing up blood.

“Sammy, _no_!” Ada shouts, just as a weight slams into Michael-Deanna’s back.

“ _De_ ,” Sammy-Lucifer – no, just Sammy – hisses out, as a pit of swirling blackness opens beneath them, as it screams and cries out because Hell has always been a mouth full of pain and a door slammed shut, because _she_ has always been an open and aching wound that will never close –

 _And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls_ , comes the prayer. _Amen_.

Deanna sees Cas staggering off the ground, so beautiful with the midnight-blue wings that Deanna had glimpsed and will never forget, not in all her years. Deanna sees Ada’s eyes, and the scream of _don’t leave me_. Deanna and Michael see Sammy and Lucifer, dragging them all the way down, and then the cage closes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive stared at this for too long hope its ok maybe ill get to some of my other fics now but with my hyperfixation? prbably not
> 
> scream


	3. the opposite of love's indifference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Holy motherfucking Christ on a bicycle,” Ada says, in a distinctly un-Ada voice, but Deanna’s too busy with the realization that air actually exists.
> 
> She’s bent in half, trying to remember how to do things like inhale or talk, and then something clicks into place and she sucks in a gasp of air, unsure of how she ever forgot. This is when she starts taking stock of her situation – Sammy seems to be having a similar experience, and Ada is…Ada’s holding herself straight, standing in the middle of the field with her head tilted back and her arms spread out.
> 
> “What the fuck!” Ada yells at the cloudy-grey sky. “What the fuck is this!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is very long but there are some breaks so take those

When Deanna and Sammy return to life, everything is wrong.

“Holy motherfucking Christ on a bicycle,” Ada says, in a distinctly un-Ada voice, but Deanna’s too busy with the realization that air actually exists.

She’s bent in half, trying to remember how to do things like _inhale_ or _talk,_ and then something clicks into place and she sucks in a gasp of air, unsure of how she ever forgot. This is when she starts taking stock of her situation – Sammy seems to be having a similar experience, and Ada is…Ada’s holding herself straight, standing in the middle of the field with her head tilted back and her arms spread out.

“What the _fuck_!” Ada yells at the cloudy-grey sky. “What the _fuck_ is this!”

“Nice to see you too,” Deanna groans out. She glances around for Sammy. Her younger sister is bent over on her knees, hacking up her lungs, coughing out phlegm and blood and tar. But as soon as their eyes meet, Deanna’s frantic and Sammy’s desperate, something flashes – black and silvery blue, wings like fire, energy and burning stars and pain. Deanna moans, clutching her head. Sammy’s scrabbling backwards in the dust.

“De,” Ada says, leaning over Sammy, her tone harsh and direct. “Sam, _calm down_.”

Her tone is soothing, even so blunt, and Deanna’s headache recedes just a bit with the reminder of _little sisters, protection._ Deanna grabs Ada’s hand, and reaches out towards Sammy. “Are you ok?” She asks hoarsely.

Ada snorts. “Are _you_?”

Deanna scowls, trying to think through the pounding pain in her head. She takes stock of her body, completely ready to say _I’m fine_ , _I’ll live_ , but something forces her hand. “I don’t know.”

Sammy yelps with pain, and Deanna turns towards her instinctively, just like Ada. Sammy’s curling in on herself, and Deanna goes to grab her shoulder, just like she has since they were five –

“No,” Sammy groans. “No, no, _no_.”

Ada grabs her shoulders and Deanna recoils, full of pain and an odd amount of rage. _How dare she_ –

“Shh,” Ada says, holding Sammy. “Shh.”

Deanna’s vision flickers, splitting in two like a weird hallucination. There’s an overlay of black and gold, melding in the air, shimmering and reflecting. She frowns and shakes her head. Her vision refocuses, but the headache is back. She must make some noise, because Ada glances at her.

“Come on, get up,” Ada says. “We need to get Sam in the car.”

“Yeah.” Deanna grits her teeth. “Yeah, I got her.”

Ada narrows her eyes and sits back on her heels. “If you say so.”

Deanna takes a deep breath and pulls Sammy’s arm around her shoulder in one quick motion. The splitting pain in her head gets worse, threatening to overwhelm her. “C’mon, you big lug.”

“De,” Sammy breathes out.

“Yeah,” Deanna says. “Yeah, that’s me.”

Sammy glances past her, eyes clearing momentarily. The touch seems to calm her, as much as it hurts Deanna, so she nods her head at Ada, who grabs the other arm.

“Ada,” Sammy says absently. “Ada!”

“Yeah, _idiot_ ,” Ada replies acerbically.

“Ada,” Deanna snaps, and the blonde rolls her eyes.

“No,” Sammy starts again. “No, Ada, _no_ – ”

“Car’s over there,” Ada grunts out, ignoring Sammy. They stagger, Sammy raving and mumbling, Deanna trying not to trip over things that aren’t there. As soon as they get the door open and get Sammy inside, Deanna spins.

“What did you _do_?”

Ada’s eyes flash – familiar and foreign all at once. “I didn’t do _anything_ ,” she says, which, ouch. “You left!”

“Yeah, and.” Deanna gestures. “Now we’re back. I swear to fucking God, Ada, if you sold your soul – ”

“No,” Ada snaps. “I didn’t. I left it alone, like you told me to, and I _left_ , because you did too. That wasn’t my fight anymore. It was _over_ , and I planned to _leave it as such_.”

Deanna blinks at her, surprised. She can’t quite put a finger on this – why is this so familiar? Why has she had this fight before? Why does it sound like Ada’s lying, and yet being more truthful than she’s ever been, all at once?

“For the love of – get in the car, De.” Ada stomps over to the driver’s side.

“This is my car!”

Ada slams the door viciously, as Deanna slides into shotgun. “You died,” Ada says flatly. “So no. It’s my car.”

“You – why is there a fucking _iPod_ in here!”

“Because you were _dead_!” Ada shouts. “So I did as I damned well liked!”

“Be quiet,” Sammy whimpers from the back. “ _Please_.”

Deanna glares at Ada, who glares back and then slams the car into reverse, hitting a pothole on the way out.

“How’d you know we’d be here?” Deanna finally asks. She’s got a lot of questions, and she doesn’t have a lot of answers, but it’s the only one she can think of for the time being, with her head feeling like somebody’s trying to split it open. “Are we in _Lawrence_?”

Ada’s fingers clench white around the wheel. She’s got an odd green ring on her index finger, but Deanna avoids looking at it because for some reason it’s far too bright in her vision. “Cas told me,” Ada finally says shortly.

“What? You’ve talked to Cas?”

Ada glances back over her, quick and then back on the road. “Once. Four hours ago. When she told me to go here.”

 _Of-fucking-course._ “So why are we in Kansas? Why are you in Kansas?”

“Why am I – I made a _life_ here. I’m living with Missouri Moseley, and shit, I went through EMT class _._ It’s been eight months, De, I’ve got a fucking life now!” Ada runs a red light. “I didn’t want to get dragged back into this – into _your_ shit! Contrary to popular belief, I don’t know what’s going on _any better than you do_!”

Deanna rubs at her temples, trying not to wince at the pain, and swallows. “Ada – pull over.”

“I know how to drive the fucking car.”

“No, just…c’mon. Please.”

Ada glares, but obliges, pulling into a Walmart parking lot. The sun’s starting to set, which means it must be winter now, which terrifies Deanna to no end. _One thing at a time._ Sammy’s still in the back, still curled up. Ada’s face is set in hard lines. Deanna can do this. Deanna can’t talk, but Deanna’s always done this – held Sammy tight to her chest when she had a nightmare, let Sammy fall asleep with her head in her lap on long nights. Deanna reaches over and yanks an unresisting Ada into a tight hug. The pain flashes stars in her vision, but Deanna runs a hand through Ada’s tangled waves, holding her tight and close.

Ada sinks into it, just a little bit. Then she stiffens. “Deanna – what’s this?”

Deanna leans back, enough to look her in the eyes. “What?”

Ada motions to her back, to John’s leather jacket and the flannel Deanna died in. Deanna sheds the layers and rolls up her sleeve first, exhaling a sigh of relief for some reason when Cas’s handprint is still there.

“No,” Ada says, and then she puts a hand on the muscle of Deanna’s shoulders and neck, where her tattoo is. The pain in Deanna’s head lights her whole body on fire, worse than memories of Hell, and she jolts back against the door, instinctively curling _away, get me away –_

“Holy mother of – what the _fuck_ was that,” Deanna hisses, staring at her younger sister.

Ada swallows. Something is contorting her face into inhuman shapes. “The wings,” she says. “They’re…burned. They’re burned in.”

Deanna doesn’t believe her until they’re back at the house. Deanna can’t seem to focus on anything until she’s staring at the mirror, shirt on the floor, the pounding in her head finally abated. The tattoos that had once covered her back – they are no longer ink. They’re angry and raised now, a mockery of feathers, red and black and scarred-white.

(They had been a rebellion, once. _Angels are watching over you_ , her mother once said. Her father had put no stock in religion, not after that. Neither had Deanna, because she had no choice. Of course she’d listened to Sammy, all her readings and her research, but her father’s word had been law.

After Sammy left, though, and John hadn’t cared at all –

Well, Deanna found someone who would do it. They’d expected her to cry, told her it would hurt worse than anything she knew. Deanna laughed, and took off her bra. It didn’t matter that they hid under her shirt, that she fucked up the healing when she was thrown into a wall during a hunt. They had been her rebellion. They had been her way to scream, _mother, sister, I do not forget you. I do not scorn you._

Fitting, then, that Heaven took and warped even that.)

“That doesn’t look too good, does it,” comes a voice.

Deanna turns. She wraps her arms around her stomach, head hurting too much to lean down and grab her shirt, but desperate all the same to hide her scars and the rolls on her stomach and the ragged sports bra she’d died in.

“Hey, honey,” Missouri says softly. Her eyes are knowing. She is warm, and open, and familiar. Deanna had been this pathetic around Ellen, too. She hates it. She hates how much she wants it.

Deanna swallows past a lump in her throat. “Is – Sam?” She flinches. “Ada?”

“Sam’s doing better, now,” Missouri says, although something in her eyes is dark and weary. “Ada picked up a few hours at the station tonight, so she’ll be back tomorrow. But how are you, hon?”

“There’s something wrong with my head,” Deanna admits, instead of denying it, or wishing it away, which definitely surprises her as much as it does Missouri.

“I know,” Missouri says. “I know.” She steps back, and hands Deanna a big blue sweatshirt. “Pull this on, and then come help me with dinner.”

The sweatshirt says _Lawrence Combined Fire Rescue_. It’s warm and smells sort of like Ada, but also like peppermint. Deanna yanks it over her head anyway, aching for something that feels like home. She follows Missouri back down the stairs, where she somehow gets manhandled onto the couch, and then her eyes are finally, blessedly, drifting closed.

Deanna sleeps for two days straight. It’s not restful; it is instead filled with memories that feel like dreams and dreams that feel like memories, angry fathers and bickering siblings, whispered words in a language Deanna shouldn’t know but does. There are teeth and shapes burned into the backs of her eyelids, and when she stirs, she is forced back down by gentle fingers to her forehead, and a glimpse of gold and spun-sugar. When she does wake up, it is the inverse of drowning. Suddenly, she can breathe, and yet she wishes she couldn’t.

“She’s awake,” Ada says from the table, hunched over a textbook.

Deanna groans in response as the pain in her head returns with a vengeance.

“Get off your ass,” Ada says. “You’ve been dead to the world for thirty five hours, and there’s someone here to see you.”

Deanna drags herself up and towards the table, focusing on the steaming cup of coffee. “Who?”

Ada’s tone is flat. “Sam says he’s related on your mom’s side.”

Deanna trips over the carpet. “Sam’s up?”

“Yeah, has been for a while.”

Deanna yanks one of Ada’s braids on the way past. “It’s – good to see you.”

Ada rolls her eyes, but the harsh lines around her eyes soften. “Glad you’re awake. Finally.”

So Deanna’s feeling slightly better about life, if she ignores the trauma-level headache, up until she walks into the greeting room and finds a grim-faced Missouri, a sickly-looking Sammy, and a man who, by all rights, should be dead.

“Ah, Deanna,” Samuel Campbell says. “Just the woman I was looking for.”

* * *

Of course Deanna can’t sleep that night. Sleep is an elusive bitch as it always has been, and of course _now_ , when Deanna would like to forget the horrible bags under Sammy’s eyes and the fear in her face, when Deanna would like to avoid the pity in Missouri’s voice and the accusation in Ada’s, when Deanna would like to run away from the pain and the singing in her head – of course she can’t. She rubs her eyes and ignores the flashing this prompts. She grits her teeth and folds her hands together, in the low light of the kitchen in the early hours of the morning.

"Hey, Cas,” she says aloud, her voice rough and cracking. She clears her throat. “If – you know. If you can hear me. Be good to hear from you, dude. ‘m kinda worried. And, you know, got some questions.” She lowers her voice, no louder than a whisper. Like the kid she never got to be, telling secrets at a sleepover. “I should be dead. I don’t know why I’m not. Why either of us aren’t.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Deanna jumps, startled out of her skin, and sees Sammy on the stairs. “Nobody.”

Sammy snorts. “Sure.”

Deanna watches her sister pour herself a glass of water, hands shaking. Sammy is far too quiet, and there’s a shadow around her that Deanna can’t focus on without making her headache worse. When Sammy tries to drink from the glass, it quivers bad enough that she almost drops it. Deanna stands up, taking it from her and then pushing her into a chair. Sammy flinches, and the bottom of Deanna’s stomach drops out.

“Cas,” Deanna says suddenly, needing to offer something. She can’t stand it, can’t stand the way Sammy moves away. “I was talking to Cas.”

Sammy’s voice grates out of her throat like she’s been screaming. Maybe she has. “You, praying. Never thought I’d see the day.”

Deanna half-smiles at her, and Sammy hesitantly smiles back.

“I’m gonna go,” Deanna says. “On the hunt. To help Samuel.”

“Deanna – ”

“I need to do something, Sam. I’m not like you. I can’t just settle down and…not. I can’t do that.” _I’m fucked up._

The smile goes away. Sammy’s mouth is set in a line. She says, “We need to talk about this, De.”

Deanna snorts. “No, we don’t.”

“Can’t even go a few hours without fighting?” Ada asks, slipping through the mudroom door.

They both frown at her, their stare-off broken.

“What were you doing up?” Deanna asks.

For a second, Ada’s eyes glow in the darkness. They’re gold. They are the downfall of empires. Deanna blinks hard, and realizes it’s just a car passing by, casting light through the window.

“I had stuff,” Ada says shortly. “Can’t you two go to sleep?”

Sammy shakes her head, and keeps shaking it. “No.”

Ada mouths _sorry_ at Deanna, who glares.

“Ada could come with me,” Deanna offers to Sammy, reaching across to calm her down. Touch is good. Touch helps Sammy, even if it makes Deanna’s head worse. Does it? It used to, didn’t it? She needs some Advil, or maybe some alcohol.

“No,” Ada says. “I’m not going to hunt down the – whatever he called it.”

“Alpha,” Sammy replies. “The Alpha monsters. Like…the original ones.”

“Come on,” Deanna says to Ada. “It’ll be some good bonding time.”

“No,” Ada snaps. She sits down. “I haven’t been hunting in five months.”

Sammy blinks, head quirking towards her.

“No time like the present,” Deanna says.

“You aren’t listening,” Ada says sharply. “I tried hunting for a while.” She takes a deep breath. “But I couldn’t do it. Laying the ghosts to rest – sure. But the monsters? The ones I was supposed to just kill? For most of them, their only victim was themselves. First. Their first victim.”

Deanna stares at the floor. She was raised that way. Doesn’t that mean it should be right?

“I couldn’t stop seeing your faces,” Ada tells them bluntly. “So I left.”

They’re silent.

"The world has changed,” Ada says. “Just ‘cause the apocalypse was averted doesn’t mean – doesn’t mean everything went back to the way it was.”

Sammy nods. She’s still speaking quietly, speaking subdued. Less like she had been after Lilith and more like…like she’s scared. “I’ve been reading the news. Countries in upheaval. Weather thrown off. It’s wild.”

“I bet there’s more monsters, too,” Deanna says.

Another car passes by, throwing light through the kitchen, across three sisters sitting silently around a table. Deanna blinks – rusted chains hang over Sammy’s shoulders, moths fluttering in the heavy darkness behind her. Deanna shakes her head – shadows on Ada’s cheeks that blur into faces made of teeth, her mouth crooked and bitter and flickering like a candle in the wind.

“Don’t go alone,” Sammy finally says to Deanna. It doesn’t sound like agreement. It sounds like disappointment.

“Whatever,” Deanna responds. “I work best alone.”

Ada rolls her eyes, and Sammy’s mouth tightens back into that glare. They both know this is a lie. They don’t know why it’s a lie.

Deanna’s never alone, not anymore. Not even in her own head.

* * *

The next day, in the Impala, Deanna’s phone rings. She doesn’t look at the caller ID before answering.

“Winchester the younger put you on probation,” comes Victoria Henricken’s voice. “I don’t even like her, but I agree you’re probably being a fucking idiot. Speaking of which, where have you two _been_?”

(Here’s the story behind Victoria Henricksen.

She was, admittedly, a girl-crush of Deanna’s, with all her gleaming muscle and locked-up eyes and long braids. This was, however, slightly dampened by the fact that for the first two years of their acquaintance, she was trying her best to put Deanna and Samantha Winchester, known and infamous serial killers, behind bars. She almost succeeded, too. Probably would have succeeded, if the demons didn’t get to her first. If she didn’t tell Deanna, _I want to help people more than I am._ If she didn’t ask, phrased like it wasn’t even a question, _so how do I survive._

 _Call me_ , Deanna said later, and put a number in her hands, ignoring Sammy’s snickers. It wasn’t gay, Deanna told herself. Victoria would be a good hunter. Deanna could show her the ropes. _Not gay, not gay –_ she’d still had her father’s voice in her head, rather than an angel’s. She’d still been concerned with things like that, because it was easier to be concerned about that than her impending death.

Victoria got possessed. Victoria managed to survive an encounter with Lilith, managed to kill her first demon only hours after learning they existed, managed to blow that building to hell and get herself out alive. Victoria turned every single do-good bone in her body into motivation for hunting, and Victoria had a punch like her fists were made of iron and a mind like a steel-trap. Every time Deanna ran into her, exorcising demons in wide swathes across the western half of the country, she had a new anti-possession tattoo. Like she’d never be able to forget that voice in her head.

They understood each other well, in that way.)

Oddly, hearing Victoria’s voice over the phone is grounding for Deanna. Here is something they couldn’t touch – she shakes her head. “Long story,” she says. “Want to get a drink and catch up?”

Victoria lets the silence stretch out. “Fine,” she finally replies. “You’re paying.”

(Here’s the story about Victoria Henricksen.

Deanna sees her profile once, in an FBI database, on a computer she doesn’t have access to but which Charlie leaves alone and untended. Victoria Henricksen is just yet another victim in the long line of unsolved murders committed by the Winchester-sisters-and-various-accomplices-who-should-all-be-dead. It will make Deanna laugh. Victoria, a victim?

The hunting community likes to gossip about each other. That never changes. _You want a good warding tattoo, you go to Jo Harvelle_ , they say. _You don’t know something, you go to Bobby Singer or Rufus Turner. You need to lay something in the ground and make sure it stays, you go to Jody Mills._

Hunters are paranoid, obsessive people. They’ll say things about the Winchester sisters that Deanna won’t want to repeat, things that are true in a painful, horrible way. And they’ll say this.

 _And if you can’t find the monster_ , they say, _you go to Victoria Henricksen. If you can’t find the monster, if you’re losing your mind, if you’ve been chasing it for weeks and it just won’t die – you go to her._ )

It’s eleven at night and they’re in one of those twenty-four-hour Waffle Houses, where the food’s pretty shitty but people can vanish into the bathrooms and nobody will notice. Waffle Houses, Deanna has gathered from evidence, will certifiably stay open through the apocalypse. Deanna sits herself down across from Victoria, who’s perusing the menu with a critical eye.

“Why are we meeting here? Couldn’t we have met in a bar?”

Victoria doesn’t look up. “Nice to see you too. Your sister would rather you not be drunk on a hunt.”

Deanna’s aware she’s whining. She’s only been alive for a week, sue her. “Since when do you talk to my sister?”

Victoria checks her watch. “Since seven hours and forty three minutes ago.” She glances up and blinks. “Girl, what the hell happened to you?”

Deanna starts laughing. “If I told you,” she says, “you wouldn’t believe me.”

Victoria’s eyes don’t change. It’s one of the things Deanna envies. Victoria’s good at keeping her face clean, clear of emotion; she’d been a fed for a reason. She responds, “Try me.”

They order their food. Deanna sits back, and she explains it all. She yanks off her jacket, and rolls up her sleeve – the handprint and the wings, which are sooty now, white and oddly blistered. She talks about the end, about the war between Heaven and Hell, the uptick in demons and the reason that the world they live in now is a wilder, harder version of itself. And then she leans back, and quietly recounts the past few days. “So we’re back,” she finishes. “And we shouldn’t be. And we don’t know why, because Cas – our angel friend – won’t pick up the damn phone.”

Victoria’s eyes are faraway. “Things _have_ been…weird, lately. They were better for a few months, but the demons are getting organized again. And like you said, weird weather, weird phenomena, stuff even I know shouldn’t be happening.” Her face twists a little bit. “Gruesome bodies, too.”

“Gruesome how?”

“Symbols carved into them. Back, usually, but sometimes stomach. It’s too consistent to not be a pattern.”

Deanna chokes on a bite of pancake, thinking of Cas and the Enochian scarring on her chest. “Probably,” she replies hoarsely. The pain in her head worsens; she grips the glass of water in her hands, feeling the damp coldness. She needs a drink. An _actual_ drink.

“Ok,” Victoria says. “Then you’re helping me with something. Seems right up your alley, after what you just said.”

Deanna’s first instinct is to argue. According to Samuel, these Alpha monsters could have even higher body counts than the normal ones. But Victoria’s eyes are cold and focused, and Deanna doesn’t mind that someone’s already done the research for a case. Maybe this won’t be too bad. “Ok,” she says. “Shoot.”

* * *

“Winchester,” Victoria says as Deanna swerves again.

“I’m fine,” Deanna replies. She is fine. It’s just that there’s singing in her head, and it _aches_ , like screaming, like being inside of a church bell.

“Are you drunk?”

Deanna is, regrettably, not drunk. She doesn’t even know where she is. _Get it together, De._

“Winchester!” They hit the rumble strips on the road. “Fucking pull over!”

“I’m fine!” Deanna’s vision in her left eye whites out as the singing grows louder.

“Jesus – left turn!”

Deanna doesn’t bother with her turn signal. She gets them to the parking lot, and then rests her head against the wheel. She wishes she could go to sleep; it’s the only time when the singing seems to stop, but sleep has been escaping her lately.

“You need to get it together,” Victoria says.

“I know,” Deanna snaps. “Just – it’s fine. Why are we here again?”

Victoria raises her eyebrows. “One guy liquified, one guy covered in boils. Obviously connected, but it’s not witchcraft. You saw the bodies.”

Deanna squints at her. “That’s not the only reason we’re here.”

“Nope,” Victoria says, getting out of the car, straightening her skirt and blouse. “But it sure is one of them.”

Deanna scrambles to catch up to her, messing with her own tie. Sammy pulls herself into a skirt sometimes, for shit like this – the whole nine yards, the FBI impersonation. Deanna doesn’t do that, not anymore.

( _C’mon, De,_ John used to say. _Just go up and say you’re lost. Give ‘em that smile. You know what to do._

Deanna hated that. Deanna didn’t want to be a thirteen-year-old with a knife under her skirt and a figurative lollipop in her hand, smiling blithely and ignoring the stares of the men who thought her curves were too mature for middle school. Deanna hated being bait, hated the way even John looked at her differently when she was all dressed up.

 _That wasn’t so bad, was it_ , John asked, after.)

“The suit would work better,” Victoria points out as they stand on the third officer’s doorstep, “if you brushed your hair more than once a week.”

“Oh, shut up,” Deanna mumbles.

Things are going great up until the aforementioned third officer face-plants in front of them.

“Well, that’s disgusting,” Victoria says, when she reveals the hole in his head. “A kid with no face and a planted gun. Racist son of a bitch.”

Deanna, meanwhile, is swaying. Locusts. Where has she heard this? She knows this, this old song – _with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the waters of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood._ “Exodus,” she blurts out. “Plagues. You were right. This is Biblical.”

Victoria exhales through her nose and stands up, squishing a locust under her foot. They find their way back to the front door. “You need to get your damn angel down here, Winchester.”

“Yeah,” Deanna says, glancing at her. “Uh, about that.”

She doesn’t get to finish, though, because Victoria’s eyes go wide and she yanks out a gun, flicking off the safety, giving Deanna just enough reaction time to duck before she pulls the trigger.

“Dude,” Deanna yelps. “That was right next to my head!”

“Deanna,” Cas growls.

Deanna turns around with a vague sense of doom in her stomach, and there’s her angel, looking ruffled and gloriously full of rage, blood blooming on the front of her blouse. It’s familiar, and not, and all Deanna can remember, for a moment, is the glimpse she’d gotten before she’d fallen, of the seraph that is playing puppeteer with Jamie Novak’s body. She was so beautiful. She is so beautiful.

“Uh,” Deanna says intelligently. “Vic – put your gun down, this is Castiel. Cas, this is Victoria Henricksen.”

“Charmed,” Cas tells her shortly. “You’re dealing with the Staff of Moses. Follow me.”

“Cas,” Deanna says, and then jolts to a start as Cas stalks towards the car. “Cas, I – dude, I prayed to you. Is there a reason you’ve been ignoring – ”

“The world does not revolve around you,” Cas snaps. “Some of us have battles to fight. Pardon me for not responding, but I’ve spent the past several days as a wavelength of celestial intent warring with Raphael’s forces in Heaven. I don’t have time to deal with you, Deanna Winchester – ”

"Thanks,” Deanna says sarcastically.

“ – but unfortunately, this weapon is angelic, and I don’t think you can handle it on your own.”

“Well, that’s all well and good, Cas, but Ada said – ”

Cas turns. “Would you shut up for _one minute_ – ”

Deanna reels at the glimpse of bristling midnight wings, feathers edged in silver, curling and stretching over the car and over Deanna. Then she blinks, and they’re gone. In their place is Cas’s cold blue eyes, more of them dotted across her cheeks and leaking clear liquid, down her neck with ridges of teeth, some sightless and white and all blinking at different speeds like a room full of clocks.

Cas frowns. “What is wrong with you?”

Deanna scoffs. “What’s wrong with _me_? Cas,” her tone is suddenly so much more frantic than she wants it to be, “your _eyes_ – ”

Cas reaches out to her, Jamie Novak’s delicate ballerina hands with winking cysts on the pads, and when they cradle Deanna’s face they are cold and callused. The singing inside of Deanna’s head coalesces into a bell-like tone and she jerks back as something screams at the seraph in front of her like she’s been struck; the grace that once Deanna had been desperate for is now painful like running in the winter, like being submerged in a river full of ice.

Cas tilts her head, staring intently. “No matter what choices you make,” she says, quiet and intense. “You still bear my mark, Deanna. Though what you did was horrible and regrettable, you are mine, not his.”

Deanna shakes her head, snapping back towards anger, which is an easier emotion to feel than the desire to get down on her knees. “I’m not _anybody’s_ – ”

“Ok- _ay_ ,” Victoria draws the word out. “Can we get back to the case? Not to interrupt…whatever this is, but right now we have, you know, slightly more important business to deal with. An angelic weapon, you said?”

“I like her,” Cas says to Deanna. “Honest. Direct. Admirable qualities. A shame you don’t possess them.”

Victoria whistles.

“Look, asshat,” Deanna starts, because, really, they’re going to get into this now?

Cas does something that is probably supposed to be an eyeroll but mostly just looks like she’s having a seizure, and reaches for their foreheads. “We don’t have _time_ for this.”

Things get pretty busy after that, what with the young kid who sold his soul to an angel for a piece of the Staff, what with how Victoria cocks a gun at Cas when she tries to root around through the kid’s brain, what with how Cas’s wings flare out in enormous shadows and how Victoria’s hand quakes but does not lower. What with the way Cas is cold and not at all unsure like she was the last time Deanna truly spoke to her, and the way Deanna can’t look away from her – she holds herself more like a soldier than she ever has. If what she says is true, she started a civil war in Heaven. If what she says is true, she’ll do anything to win it.

Deanna can’t breathe around her.

“Deanna, what the hell have you gotten yourself into,” Victoria asks. They’re staring down at the ground, where Cas has fallen three stories into a car and left a crater that speaks of an impact much larger than her small frame. Raphael’s assassin has disappeared and Cas is getting to her feet, a stony gaze and a broken leg that straightens with an audible crack.

“She’ll be fine,” Deanna says instead of answering.

“That’s not what I was asking.” Something flickers over Victoria’s face. “Let’s just find this asshole.”

And they do. Deanna teaches Victoria angel-sigils, including the banishing one. Deanna ignores how it flashes when she slaps her hand to it, how the wing-scars on her back grow hot and painful. Victoria grips the angel-blade tight and follows Deanna into the enormous house, looking like she’d rather be anywhere but here. Deanna almost stumbles into a wall, hearing the wail of Raphael, hearing singing in her head, and winces as she realizes that Victoria is almost certainly not going to want to take another case with her any time soon.

( _Your world is crazy,_ Victoria said once.

 _Your world, too,_ Deanna reminded her. It had been exhilarating, bringing someone else in on this. Teaching them exorcisms and tricks, the runes and the right books to search.

Victoria snorted and shook her head. _Not my world, Winchester_.

 _It could be_ , Deanna said. _If you wanted it to._

That had been a lie. There was nothing about ‘want’ in a hunter’s life. A hunter didn’t really want to be a hunter, just like a girl sometimes didn’t want to be a girl. They did what they could with the weapons they were given.)

They light a circle of holy fire around the angel, Balthazar. He has silver flickering around him, if Deanna can even call it that, stitched across his skin like some kind of Frankenstein. He stands casually, but it is wrong. It’s always wrong, with angels. He raises his voice to catch Deanna, lurking in the shadows. “You could take me apart, righteous girl. You can see them, I know you can.”

With a whirling like the floor dropping out from underneath Deanna, Balthazar is lit from the inside, the bones and barely-flowing blood illuminated by the glow of the angelic weapons which he has sewn into the body. She knows what he means, instantly, intimately, how to undo the seams. Cas frowns, but it’s pensive. Deanna is stuck, pinned to the floor. The singing has quieted, and in its place the silence is more terrible.

“But you don’t want to be just another pawn.” Balthazar laughs, back to being an angel playing with the body of a man in a v-neck and tight jeans. “As if you aren’t already.”

Deanna can feel her pulse thudding in time with her headache. She twitches her chin at Victoria. “Not my hunt,” she forces out.

Victoria snaps into motion, stepping forward. “You give that boy his soul back,” Victoria warns Balthazar. “You might be an angel, but I’ve met worse.” As far as threats go, it’s not too strong. But Victoria’s angry, and Victoria picks things up fast, and the way she’s holding the angel-blade tells Deanna all she needs to know.

“How cute,” Balthazar says. “Torture. Very original.”

Victoria shrugs. “Castiel over there doesn’t seem like she’ll stop me.”

Balthazar looks faintly disgusted. Unlike Cas, unlike Gabriel, unlike Zachariah, there is nothing in his face. He plays simply for himself, and it’s apparent in every move he makes. “These apes,” he says. “This is who you align yourself with?”

Cas looks up. There’s blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth. It sparks with that echo of wings and terror, of lightning and pouring rain. “Yes,” Cas responds. She steps back, and gestures to Victoria – a hand, sweeping, clean lines and flashes in the dark. “I believe, as they say, the floor is yours.”

* * *

“Hey,” Sammy says over the phone, sounding disturbingly chipper and almost like herself. “So you know my freaky psychic shit, right.”

Deanna blinks five times and then moves over into the right lane. She has a horrible sense of imminent doom, which has been a low-lying thing since Sammy turned ten but has recently ramped up even worse; ostensibly because of her second return from Hell but more likely because of how much smoother it has been than her first, which is not only a disturbing thing to say but an even worse thing to consider. “Yeah.”

“So uh,” Sammy pauses. “It’s back.”

“There’s an ‘and’ coming, isn’t there.”

“It’s back, and it’s turned up to at least ten.”

Deanna wants to lean her head against the steering wheel. “You feeling any cravings for hot and delicious demon blood?”

Sammy’s silent.

Deanna cringes; she hadn’t really meant to phrase it like that.

Sammy leaves her some dignity, though if Deanna knows her at all she’s probably trying not to snicker. “Not really.”

“Ok.” Deanna sighs. “Well at least there’s that.”

They sit in silence for another minute.

“I think I’ve got x-ray vision,” Deanna offers. “Or I might just be losing my mind.”

“When are you not,” Sammy says, but it doesn’t really sound like a joke.

More silence. Deanna wants to hang up, but she also doesn’t.

“You think there’s something wrong with Ada?” Sammy asks.

“Sam,” Deanna says. “I think there’s something wrong with us.”

Sammy’s quiet for a little while. Then she responds, barely a breath, “But there’s something wrong with Ada, too.”

“Yeah,” Deanna finally agrees, testing it out. She’s probably known since they came back, but she hadn’t wanted to admit it.

“Samuel called,” Sammy says. “Alpha shifter. When you get back, we can head up and deal with it.”

“We?” Deanna questions.

“You and me,” Sammy says awkwardly. “Like old times.”

“Like old times.” Deanna smiles without even meaning to. “Ok.”

“Ok.”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

When Deanna hits Lawrence, she refuels, buys a sandwich, and then picks up Sammy. “Hey,” she says, glancing at her little sister. “No Ada?”

“Ada’s out,” Sammy replies. “She told you that.” 

Deanna shrugs. The day is going well, so far, and her head doesn’t hurt too much. Maybe Sammy’s psychic powers are back but Deanna is finding she doesn’t care that much. Some things seem so trivial, now. She shakes her head and tries to refocus. “Good on her.” Then, “You ok?”

Sammy shrugs. “Cas dropped by.”

“And?” Deanna asks, pulling out of Lawrence, the road underneath and the lonely sky above and her sister beside her, feeling like home.

Sammy’s gaze drops. “She just wanted to tell me that nobody hears my prayers anymore.”

(Later, Cas will ask why Deanna started praying.

Deanna says, _Sam needs someone watching her ass._

Deanna doesn’t say, _you’re the only one left to pray to._ )

They meet up with someone who is, in some way, distantly related to them. Neither of them are quite sure how; neither of them, it seems, can bring themselves to care.

“You two look like Hell warmed over,” Gwen Campbell says.

Neither of them laugh.

Gwen agrees to catch a ride with them. Gwen radiates mild discomfort for the better part of the drive, the interview with the family, and the rush to the next house, where they find another family dead and a baby crying. Deanna’s the one who picks up the baby and gets it to stop crying, and Sammy’s the one who ends up driving them to the gas station and subsequently traumatizing at least two old ladies.

“You sure you’ll be ok?” Sammy asks Deanna, back in the motel room.

Deanna scoffs. “Sam, I raised _you_. If I could manage to deal with your,” she coughs, “uh, mess, I’m sure I can deal with this. Take Gwen, check the dad, I’ll be fine.”

Of course, Deanna eats her words since, unsurprisingly, fate has it out for her. Not only is the baby bleeding, but the baby is bleeding because it’s a baby shapeshifter.

“Aw, shit,” Deanna says. She answers her phone. “Hey, Sam – ”

"I think – ”

“The baby’s a shifter, yeah, way ahead of you.”

“Gwen says it’d be best if we took the kid back to the Campbell compound.”

“Hm,” Deanna says.

Logically, Deanna knows, her father would have told her to just kill the baby here and now, but the thing is so small and fragile.

( _If you can’t save her,_ John said, _kill her_.

Deanna had shaken her head. John had, even in his last moments, glared at her, sick of his rebellious daughter. Deanna didn’t know how he could say that, how he could even think that, when he’d spent his entire life drilling it into her head that Sam was her sister and her most important priority. She didn’t know how he could just flip a switch – blood one moment, a monster the next. Eventually, she realized she did know.

After all, it was what he was to her, every day.)

“Damn it,” she says to the baby. “ _Damn it_.”

The police officer that smashes down the door, on the other hand, makes her head hurt. His eyes flash, revealing he’s a shifter, and Deanna reacts instinctively the way she used to with little Sammy in motel rooms – finger on the safety of a pistol, the baby behind her. She twitches, the singing in her head becoming a babbling cacophony, and the gun goes off at the same time as another shot rips through the shifter’s chest.

“Good timing,” Deanna tells her little sister, once they’re in the Impala and driving away. “We sure we want to give this kid to hunters?”

Sammy glances over in a surprised sort of way, like she’s not used to Deanna actually applying critical thinking to real-world situations.

Deanna, who can read this in her eyes, says, “Oh, shut up. I use my brain sometimes.”

“Key word ‘sometimes’.”

“Eyes on the road, Samantha.”

Gwen speaks up. “The kid will be fine. We’ll give it to foster parents who can raise it. We aren’t worried as much about this rather than – getting the Alpha monsters.”

“Hm,” Deanna says again. Then, “Shh, buddy, don’t cry.”

“You guys aren’t bad at this,” Gwen says with some surprise, which, _ouch_ , apparently their reputation hasn’t done well in their absence. “Where have you been the past year?”

Deanna doesn’t look up, but she can see Sammy twitch towards her, in the driver’s seat.

“We were away,” Sammy finally settles on.

“Away,” Gwen says disbelievingly. “Sure.”

Deanna snorts. “Say it like it is, Sam. We started the apocalypse, and we died for it.”

Gwen doesn’t say anything for the rest of the drive.

“Girls,” Samuel says to the three of them when they return in a vaguely condescending tone, which only serves to remind Deanna of some of the remarks John used to make. “I see you were successful.”

Deanna and Sammy share a look which quickly and efficiently communicates their shared desire to fuck with him as much as possible – Deanna because she doesn’t like men who try to control her, and Sammy because she’s always been pretty feminist in her own vaguely off-putting way. Deanna makes eye contact with Samuel and smiles widely, which pulls at a scar at the corner of her mouth in a way that is, to be fair, kind of gross. Samuel doesn’t flinch, but he’s got a wary look in his eyes that Deanna recognizes and appreciates.

In the end though, it’s not Deanna who really makes Samuel suspicious. It’s Sammy, when the Alpha shifter charges through the doors, when it throws one of the Campbells into the wall and refuses to budge. When the shifter goes for the child, picks it up and shoots the parents wearing Samuel’s face, it’s Sammy who lets out a shriek in a language that Deanna dreams she remembers. The shifter gets tossed against a wall and Sammy collapses onto the floor. Deanna stumbles to her feet with a groan and a headache worse than any hangover she’s ever had. Gwen and Samuel – the real Samuel – are bleeding from their ears and staring at them like they have no idea what the sisters are.

“Ok,” Deanna says through a pained grimace. Her head _aches_. “We’re gonna just, you know, go now.” She picks up the baby and slings Sammy’s gargantuan limbs across her shoulders, and hightails it out of there before any of the Campbells can react.

Deanna’s on the phone with Ada when Sammy wakes up, right as they cross the border into Indiana.

“I don’t know,” Deanna’s saying to Ada. “She just – screamed, you know, and it was like her psychic shit, but worse.”

Ada’s focusing on the wrong problem. “What are you going to do with a _baby_?”

“I don’t know,” Deanna hisses. “But I sure as hell wasn’t leaving it with _Samuel_ and the Campbell weird-fucks.”

“As always,” Ada says, “your grasp of the English language astounds me.”

“Fuck off, Adamine.”

“You fuck off, Deanna Millie.”

Sammy groans. “Do you guys ever stop?”

Deanna looks over at her sister suddenly enough that the car swerves, and blinks past auras flitting through her vision to address her sisters and the baby in her lap. “Sammy, dude, you ok?”

“Is that Sam? Is she ok?”

“I don’t know,” Deanna says to Ada, “if you’d let her talk, maybe she’ll tell you.”

“Put me on speakerphone, Jesus Christ.”

“I’m _driving_!”

Sammy takes the phone with a long-suffering look. “Hi, Ada. Yeah, she’s fine, she’s just being an asshole ‘cause she can.”

“You’re an asshole,” Deanna mutters. “Both of you.”

At least, she thinks, some things don’t change.

* * *

They spend a few days in motel rooms. They spend a few days trying to figure out what to do with the baby. On the third evening, Deanna frowns at Sammy, who now looks haggard, more than just sick – hollowed-out moons stamped under her eyes, the veins on her hands standing out, her clothes hanging more loosely off her frame. Shaking, like she was when she first woke up. Deanna might not be a very good sister sometimes, but she knows Sammy. “Have you been eating?”

Sammy scowls and rocks the baby aggressively. “None of your business, De.”

“Uh, yeah, it is.”

Sammy raises a spiteful eyebrow at her. “So we gonna talk about your drinking, then?”

Deanna is, she knows, a horrible person. She doesn’t want to talk about this. “Whatever. I’m going out. Need to stretch my legs.”

“I’m not bailing you out of the drunk tank,” Sammy tells her.

“Fine,” Deanna replies.

"Fine,” Sammy says.

“Fine,” Deanna calls back through the doorway, because getting the last word in arguments like that is important.

She doesn’t start a bar fight. Instead she breaks the elbow of a guy who’s harassing a teenager and then yanks his arm out of its socket and leaves, stone-cold sober. She wonders why she hasn’t felt the urge for a drink since she came back from the Cage. She wonders why the voices in her head sing with glorious bloodthirstiness when she hears his arm crack.

She drives out to the middle of a cornfield. Everything is emptier, now – feels colder and darker. It’s not just because it’s winter, it’s also because this is an America broken apart. There’d been tsunamis on both coasts and earthquakes of record breaking enormity, sure, but those have calmed down. Now there’s just the knowledge that there’s monsters in the shadow that no one can put a face to. There’s fault lines that split through towns, freak cults that started sacrificing humans, huge swathes of land cut out of the Midwest that are blackened and barren, or mountainous where once there were none. It’s the remnants of angelic battlegrounds, echoing through another plane. It’s tearing the world into shreds.

She turns, and Cas’s leaning against the other side of the Impala.

“Hey,” Deanna says.

Cas responds, after a minute. “Would you help me bury a body?”

Deanna scowls. “You only ever come to me when you need something, now?”

The head tilt is so endearingly familiar. The gauzy shadows of wings dripping blood are not. Cas holds out a hand. “You need something, too.”

Deanna takes the chain from Cas. It’s the amulet, the one she’d lent Cas to look for God, the one that once upon a time held a bargain with an ancient being. It hums, and when Deanna puts it over her head everything goes a little quiet, muted like she’s underwater.

“Would you help me bury a body?” Cas asks again.

Deanna sighs. “Yeah, sure.”

Cas doesn’t even stop, just reaches out and touches two fingers to Deanna’s forehead. The world flashes by at dizzying speeds, lighting something in Deanna’s memory that brings her headache back full-force when they land.

“Your car is back at the motel,” Cas says, before Deanna can even ask.

Deanna frowns down at the body. It’s a girl. It’s barely a girl. In the foggy light of the streetlamps in a parking lot thirty feet away, Deanna can see the enormous wings burned into the grass around her small body. There’s runes carved into her forehead. There’s no blood leaking from the chunks torn out of her, not even where Deanna can see straight through to her ribcage. Bone white and gleaming, too clean for the fact that it’s a skeleton inside a body.

“Why can’t you do it?” Deanna asks.

“She is one of Raphael’s warriors,” Cas says. “Was one of Raphael’s warriors. I burned her arm when I tried to lay her to rest.”

Deanna silently takes the proffered shovel and starts digging into the cold ground. Her bad knee aches in the cold and this is definitely going to make her back sore tomorrow, but she’d rather the pain than the unsettling nature of how it feels now when Cas’s grace trespasses through her veins. Cas perches on a huge cement statue – they must be in one of those old battlefield sites, from the Revolution or the Civil War – and watches. In the darkness, her wings arc vast and familiar over Deanna’s head; they blot out the stars.

“None of them will listen,” Cas says, sounding frustrated. “Why won’t any of them listen?”

“Siblings are like that,” Deanna replies. “Why can’t you touch the girl?”

“Her vessel is – of a very holy breeding. A saint, somewhere along the way. Too holy for me.”

Deanna’s lip curls. “Breeding.”

“Much like your line.”

Deanna leans on the shovel and takes this in. “Would my parents have even fallen in love if not for you guys?”

Cas is reluctant to answer. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know – ”

“I don’t _know_ , Deanna. There is only one path. There has only ever been one path. Until you.”

Deanna glances back at her. The rebellious angel, sitting perched like a bird. Human bodies don’t move like that, but Cas never really seemed to care. Deanna’s so wrong she managed to fuck up an angel of God _._ Her dad would have found that funny.

“Do we need to do any – funeral rites?” Deanna asks, awkwardly settling the girl in the shallow grave.

Cas says, “The song you are singing is good enough.”

Deanna hadn’t even realized she was humming until she notices it’s the same song in her head. With the watered-down shelter of the amulet around her neck, she can hear it as one coalescing hymn. “I can’t get it right.”

“That is because it is made for harmonizing sets of vocal chords,” Cas says. “More than you have.”

“Right,” Deanna responds. 

“I don’t need anything from you,” Cas says then.

Deanna hunches her shoulders. “Well, fine – ”

Cas huffs out an exasperated noise that is so _human_. “I don’t need anything from you, Deanna. But I do want things.”

They stare at each other. For a moment, the amulet on Deanna’s chest feels warm, and she doesn’t see the world as it should be, but rather as it is. Deanna looks down at her, because Deanna’s just the few inches taller. Cas’s hair ruffles in the wind, and her trench coat is ripped and stained with blood, tied at her waist. Her eyes are bluer than her scarf, bluer than the sky, blue like Deanna thinks stars should be blue.

“How are things, up there?” Deanna asks, rather than acknowledge this.

Cas shakes her head, once, twice, but it’s not really a shake of the head because that would imply humanity. “Divided. There are many factions. We are currently allied with Haniel, gaining leverage, but I fear they will betray me. Our positions are not aligned in all ways; this is civil war, and there can be no dissent.”

“Anna,” Deanna clarifies for herself after a minute.

“Haniel.”

“Yeah.”

Cas screws up her face, which is bizarrely human. “Names are important. You know this. You become what you are. When Gabriel was Loki for an eon, then so did they – did she – become less and simultaneously more.”

“Haniel means…joy, right?”

“In a way.”

“In a way?”

“Joy of God. Alternatively, grace of God.”

“And…”

“And grace,” Cas says with her eyes very quiet, “is a weapon.”

Deanna swallows, looks to the dirt. “And this one?”

“Zaqiel. Purity of God. God has protected us.”

Deanna looks down at the dead little body in the grave. “Oh.”

(Someday, Deanna will ask her again. A mirror of their first meeting. _Who are you_?

 _I am an angel,_ Cas says, tiredly. She does not say _of the Lord_ , though in Deanna’s mind she is the only one who deserves to.

 _No,_ Deanna will reply. _I mean who are you, Cas_.

Cas looks at her. She hesitates for a very long time. _I am the thunder that rumbles in the clouds_ , she says eventually. _I am the forks of lightning that arc overhead. I am the breath before the wind and rain sweep across the field, and the lament the skies sing of ages past._

Deanna can’t breathe. She doesn’t dare breathe.

Cas looks down at her hands. _I am all this,_ she will say quietly. _And I am what you made me too._ )

Cas stands up with a flurry of rustling feathers. With a sweep, the dirt dumps itself over the grave. An angel is buried in an American battleground beside an abandoned parking lot. It feels unfathomably wrong. Everything feels unfathomably wrong.

“I should go back,” Deanna says quietly. “Sam is probably wondering where I am.”

“Of course,” Cas responds, just as quiet.

* * *

They head to South Dakota. Bobby apparently knows a family that can take the baby. He also apparently has a dressing-down for Sammy and Deanna, neither of whom are very excited about it.

Long days like this are the kinds of days Deanna can still feel familiar in. She sings along to her music and tries not to lose the moments the way she does when she’s alone, lets Sammy talk about a podcast she’s started listening to, history and myth and crime all wrapped up together. It feels familiar, shouldn’t it feel familiar – Deanna knows Sammy. Deanna doesn’t know Sammy. Is it that Deanna doesn’t know Sammy, or is it that someone not-Deanna knows someone not-Sammy? Deanna shakes her head and ignores the shadow rippling around her car; it’s always been there, and just because it centers around Sammy now doesn’t make it any different. 

"So here’s what we think,” Ada says, voice coming over the tinny speaker of Deanna’s phone. She’s between calls at the station, so apparently she’s bugging them.

"Sure,” Deanna replies with a sigh. “Shoot.”

Sammy leans forward. She looks more animated than she has recently. Deanna got her to eat a whole sandwich earlier, too. “So before we broke the last seal – ”

“When you were drinking demon blood,” Deanna says, partly to be an asshole and partly just to get it out there.

“Right,” Sammy says, with a sort-of wince. “Well the thing is, I was – imbibing the blood of a vessel, but because they _had_ a demon inside them…”

“The technicalities, whatever, mean that it was then demon blood, enhancing her psychic shit,” Ada adds.

“Petition to stop calling it my psychic shit,” Sammy says.

“Rejected,” Ada and Deanna say at the same time.

Sammy scowls. “I think it’s more or less the same concept as Catholic Communion.”

“Yes,” Ada says, like she actually has any idea what they’re talking about, which Deanna is pretty sure she doesn’t, considering she’s an atheist.

“Just,” Sammy says, “you know, in the opposite direction.”

“Sure.”

“So,” Ada says, “even though technically Lucifer was just…in you – ”

Sammy’s face is markedly uncomfortable.

Ada bulldozes onwards. “It’s still the – what’d you call it?”

“Transubstantiation,” Sammy says. “But Satan rather than Jesus.”

Deanna rubs her temples and contemplates driving them all off a cliff. “So what are you trying to say?”

“Basically,” Ada says, “if the demon blood was like, weed or something, and when she got stoned her powers increased – ”

Deanna thinks she knows where this is going, even though the metaphor is kind of the worst ever. “Having Lucifer in your head was like – ”

Sammy winces. “Injecting heroin directly into my brain.”

“Not a great comparison,” Ada says. “But yeah, basically.”

The three of them sit in silence and reflect on this for a few minutes. Deanna flips off a man who tries to pass her, and then accelerates to at least fifteen over the speed limit.

“Ok,” Deanna finally says, painfully. She did, after all, say yes to Michael, and technically, Sammy saying yes to Lucifer was her fault. She grimaces. “So is it…permanent?”

“I have no idea,” Ada says.

But that’s not, actually, Deanna’s most pressing question. “If you had Lucifer in you,” she says, “and I had Michael in me. For an unspecified amount of time.”

Sammy’s eyes are reflecting how Deanna feels.

“Then why,” Deanna asks, “are we ok?”

This isn’t a question any of them can answer, nor do they really want to. Ada hangs up not long after that, which leaves Sammy and Deanna to uncomfortably avoid the topics that aren’t good for conversation right now, which is more or less everything. Bobby’s face is much easier to deal with than the archangels that briefly resided in their bodies.

“Shoulda called me earlier,” Bobby says, his voice gruff. “Would’ve liked to hear from you kids.”

“Second time back and all,” Deanna replies. “Didn’t want another face full of holy water.”

They hesitate on his doorstep for a moment before he yanks them into a hug, Sammy leaning down and resting her head on top of his, Deanna awkwardly squished between. Then it’s over, quick as that.

“So I’ve been doing some research,” Bobby starts, “into these Alpha monsters, and all. Gimme the kid, Sam.” There’s somebody yelling, from deep inside the maze of Bobby’s house. He takes the baby, and then shoots a glance at the sisters. “Rufus is here.”

Deanna coughs. “Rufus?”

Bobby avoids responding. “So you said you found this kid on a hunt with Samuel? Campbell?”

Deanna snorts. “Yeah, apparently he’s not dead.”

“Neither are we,” Sammy feels the need to point out.

Bobby side-eyes them. “Neither are you.”

It’s Rufus, then, who brings up the whole Crowley-still-has-Bobby’s-soul thing, after the deal for Death’s location so long ago. Rufus is still batty and weird, but he seems to like Deanna so Sammy and Bobby spend a few hours trying to figure out how they might be able to blackmail Crowley, and Deanna and Rufus get a little drunk. It works out. It all works out. Deanna stares at her hands and realizes the liquor isn’t doing anything for her, at some point. It’s about the same time Bobby makes a joke that Deanna knows she should know, knows that there’s some sort of background to it from her being a pudgy little high schooler, but she’s drawing a blank. She can’t remember.

Everything goes quiet, except that it doesn’t, because the world is never quiet for Deanna anymore.

* * *

They take the Alpha vamp hunt because Samuel trusting them isn’t a bad thing, even if he’s sketchy as fuck and neither of them really like him very much. As it has in the fashion of literally everything since they’ve come back to life, the hunt goes to hell in a handbasket basically immediately.

“Hey,” Deanna says, holding the machete, watching some of the Campbells head towards where they think the lair is. “Maybe, you know, tone it down on the freaky psychic shit. Just while they’re watching.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sammy replies, “stop calling it ‘ _my freaky psychic shit_ ’ or so help me – ”

“No.” Deanna rolls her eyes. “You check around back.”

“Fuck you,” Sammy says.

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Ok, so that conversation goes more smoothly than ninety percent of the conversations they’ve been having – most of which are derailed almost immediately by the fact that there’s something deeply wrong with the two of them and for once in their lives even _Sammy_ doesn’t want to talk about it – but things go to shit pretty soon after that.

(Someday. Someday, someday, someday.

They’ll still be good at fighting, they’ll just have realized it’s tinged with the edge of another ancient grudge between two siblings, another cosmic battle. Because apparently even angels are petty.

 _What,_ Sammy spits. _Don’t like that I know the devil better than I know you_?

Deanna’s still surprised sometimes when Sammy bites back. Then, she realizes – no, she’s not. Not in any way. Never has been. Moths swirl around her sister, and teeth are silver and sharp in her mouth. Her head’s still broken. So’s Sammy’s.

 _Well_ , Deanna will reply. Incandescent with rage. She’s good at that, even though it’s not just her anymore, is it. _Haven’t you always_?

 _Right_ , Sammy says. Voice like a knife singing, voice like a man screaming. _Right. Because I’m the monster._ )

There’s a misty forest and a dark warehouse, and Sammy’s a bleeding-heart girl sometimes. She tries to get the other vampires out, the ones who were under the Alpha’s knife just as he is now, apparently, under theirs. Apparently, since Samuel didn’t see fit to tell them – the Alpha vamp’s in chains, and he hisses at Deanna as she sneaks past.

Getting the other vamps out works, until it doesn’t. Samuel and the Campbells find them, and surround them, and shove them into the room with the Alpha. All their ducks in a row. The Alpha’s barely strapped down, and Sammy snarls when they decapitate the last girl. So much for getting Samuel to trust them. Gwen puts a gun to Sammy’s head and the bullets fall right out. The building shakes. Sammy doesn’t even bleed; there’s hellfire in her eyes nowadays.

The Alpha is laughing.

Deanna’s hidden in the shadows. She knows the Campbells don’t know she’s there. When she steps out, it’s with a knife in her hand and the amulet wrapped in her other fist. When she tells Samuel to leave her baby sister alone, it’s dissonant. Her own voice grates against her ears, because it’s not quite her voice. The singing crescendos, and Gwen drops the gun like it burns. Deanna’s not used to being looked at like this. Like she’s something horrifying. Like she’s something _wrong_. Then Sammy huffs out a sigh and steps closer, all six feet of lanky nerd-girl, and Deanna decides she doesn’t really care.

(That’s not true. John had looked at her like she was something foreign to him, most days. John hadn’t known what to do with two girls, much less two girls who were – not girls in the way that they should have been.

Deanna loved her father. Really, she did.

She got used to the hard look in his eyes, though. She got used to stepping around certain topics. She knew the right things to say to keep her father looking at her happy. Keep her father looking at her like he approved of her. Keep her father looking at her like maybe he loved her. Sometimes.

Sammy, on the other hand, stepped right over them.

Deanna could notice later, probably, that John had just always fought with Sammy, never tried to understand her weird hyper-focus, never tried to compliment her bizarre style choices. Part of that was the fact that Sammy was antagonistic and smart, but their father picked half the fights too. Deanna could notice later that John had, for a long time, been looking at Sammy like she was something that eventually he’d have to kill. Maybe he wouldn’t even mind.

Deanna loved her father. Really, she did. It was just that she loved her sister more. She didn’t think she cared about being a little monstrous when it was for Sammy.

Deanna knew the one prayer. Or maybe she didn’t, but she does now, and she’ll never forget it. _In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti –_ )

“Congratulations,” Crowley tells them. He’s looking right at Deanna. “Even I don’t know how you got out.”

Samuel, since the rest of the Campbells he’s brought are apparently demons or dead, is surprisingly mute. He looks kind of like an angry scarecrow, if scarecrows were bald. _Nah_ , Deanna thinks. Just an angry bald man. An angry and ugly bald man. God, Deanna can’t believe they’re related.

“You’re the new King of Hell,” Sammy says to Crowley, with some surprise. Maybe she can smell it or something.

“What,” Crowley spreads his hands. “You gave up the position!”

“Son of a bitch,” Deanna tells the room. She mostly means Samuel, for the fact that he’s working with the King of Hell, but she figures it applies to the aforementioned King, too.

“My mother,” Crowley says, “is a perfectly nice woman.”

Neither Sammy nor Deanna know how to respond to this. Samuel seems vaguely thrown off by their engaging in banter with a demon, but Deanna doesn’t really care. In fact, she thinks, she’d rather he be thrown off – Deanna’s lived a life defined by men, and she doesn’t mind another one being afraid of her.

“Deanna,” Crowley says, drawing out her name in a vaguely sing-song way. “Leave him alone. He’s a means to an end. Now you two, on the other hand…”

"What do you want,” Sammy snaps at him.

Crowley steeples his hands. “I have an offer.”

Deanna snorts. What does he have to offer them that they care about?

“Work for me.” Crowley smiles. “And I’ll consider giving back dear old Bobby’s soul.”

 _Shit,_ Deanna thinks vehemently.

* * *

Life speeds up a little bit after that. The Winchester sisters stay well away from the Campbells, and despite Ada’s – and Deanna’s – reluctance, they hunt down the Alpha shifter for Crowley, and keep an eye out for more. Bobby isn’t happy about it, but Rufus gives Deanna and Sammy a nod when they tell him, and offers to help. It’s the right thing to do.

During the long hours spent trekking from Lawrence to Sioux Falls and everywhere in between, Sammy and Deanna spend a lot of time talking. They set up a plans – neither of them likes working for Crowley, so Sammy calls Rufus up and they start looking for Crowley’s bones. If they can torch him, then the contract will be up, or it should. Neither of them can remember if it’s worked before. Neither of them, they’re realizing, can remember much.

They take care of a ghost in a town in Utah that got hit hard by the semi-apocalypse. A Mexican woman holds her kids’ hands tightly. The kids are little, but they don’t make any noise, not at all. The woman asks sharply, “What does the government care about us? They never have before.”

The town is haunted. The people are haunted, too.

They get pie at a diner and stay far away from the few other locals, who are eyeing them with justifiable hostility. Sammy’s on edge, jumping at shadows, and Deanna can’t focus for shit, not that she’s been able to for weeks anyway. She shoves down the urge to fight with Sammy, the urge to punch someone. They’re here to help these people. They’re here to help.

There’s been no recent deaths, barely enough residents in the town to have a cemetery. It’s weird, everything too quiet. Ada texts to ask how they are; neither of them respond. A thunk outside their motel room, and Sammy flinches out of her skin, which means the power goes out. In the sudden darkness, Deanna sees things drip and flutter, skeins of what looks like TV fritz that are gauzy and thick in the air. Her head aches, so she pulls Sammy up and away, and they head out into the desert with flashlights and Baby. Deanna’s following something. Sammy doesn’t question it, not the way she used to. Some days they can be De-and-Sammy and some days they don’t know how to do anything but fight, but no matter what they’re different now. Deanna’s been shying away from thinking about why.

They stop the car when the music in Deanna’s head gets too loud, when the fritz-veil becomes soupy in the air. Deanna gets out, feeling like she’s dreaming. It’s a new moon, and the sky is full of stars, and the dessert is empty and exposed. Sammy is shivering. Deanna throws her their dad’s old leather jacket – Deanna doesn’t know how to talk to her about food without fighting so instead she just keeps her warm. Anyway, the scars on Deanna’s back burn too hot for her to feel the cold much on her own anymore.

At least, she thinks, neither of them are high or drunk. World’s too batshit crazy for that, right now.

“Hey – ” Sammy’s voice cuts off. “Oh.”

Sammy’s flashlight has found the edges of an enormous crater, and when they shove through the underbrush, there they find the body. Rather, it is not a body; the flesh is gone, the bones picked clean, but the skeleton remains in place as it died. The only part of the body no longer intact is the skull, where the eye sockets have been caved in. On either side are enormous wings of ash.

Neither of them speak for a minute.

“Should we call Cas?” Sammy asks. “I don’t know if we should burn the bones of – an angel.”

Deanna shakes her head. “It’s not an angel, anymore. Just the vessel.”

Sammy crouches down and reaches out to brush the ash. She twitches. “I guess this explains why the ghost behaved sort of like a poltergeist. I don’t know what the logistics are of an angel burning out themselves and the vessel, but not the original soul.”

Deanna shrugs. She fumbles with the flashlight, getting out lighter fluid and matches. She thinks about burying Zaqiel, and hums the hymn.

Sammy doesn’t stop her from torching the bones, but as the sparks catch, she says, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.”

Deanna doesn’t speak Latin, but she knows this. _Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord._

On the way out of town, Deanna gives that woman her actual number. Says, “If anything like this happens again, call us. We can help.”

The worn lines on the woman’s face soften, just a bit. “Thank you.” As the sisters walk away, she calls after their backs, “Get well soon.”

* * *

Ada’s blunt, like usual. “What’s wrong?”

Deanna stares down the road. She’s been avoiding motels since the vessel ghost in Utah, and Sammy hasn’t complained. Sammy spent four hours talking her ear off about religious allegories in classic literature, and has now passed out in the backseat. Deanna wishes she could sleep, but it seems since the first two days after the return from the Cage – she flinches away from the name – she can’t. The singing isn’t too loud, right now, but it’s still there. It’s a headache, but it’s two in the morning. Everything’s a headache.

“De?”

“Yeah,” Deanna replies.

“What’s wrong with you?”

"Rude.”

"For fuck’s sake.”

Deanna’s quiet. She blinks hard and wonders if the singing has actually moved out of her head and into full-blown hallucinations. She says, “I can’t remember my mother’s face.” She says, “What does that make me.”

Ada doesn’t say anything for a while. If it was Ada talking to Sammy, Deanna catches herself thinking, she’d probably know exactly what to say. Ada and Sammy are good at that, at talking to each other. It’s Deanna who’s shit at it.

“I did try,” Ada says. “To get you back.”

“Whatever.”

“I didn’t forget about you guys.”

“I said whatever, Ada.”

“No – listen to me, Jesus, De. You don’t forget about the people you love, ok?”

“Apparently I do,” Deanna mutters.

“Ok, well, I don’t.”

“Ok.”

“Ok,” Ada says.

“Why are you even awake?”

Ada doesn’t sound tired, which is kind of impressive. “Had a call.”

“Yeah?”

“You know what the GCS is?”

“Why the fuck would I know what the GCS is.”

Ada snorts. “Glasgow Coma Scale. It’s a fifteen-point scale to…basically to measure alertness, in the context of traumatic brain injuries.”

“Ok, and?”

“Well, a dead person can get three points.”

“Damn.” Deanna can’t focus enough to make a quip. “Is this story going anywhere?”

Ada sighs. “We had a fall injury go out earlier. Drunk dude put his head through drywall.”

“Ok?”

“He got a four on the GCS.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, it was pretty bad. He got the extra point ‘cause he had his hands clasped.”

“Look at you, saving lives.”

“You save lives too. Just in a different way.”

Deanna exhales. “Sometimes.”

(When was the first time she looked at a monster that looked like a human, and thought of them not as a human but as a monster?

Her father always told her that monsters had sharp teeth and hungry eyes. He told her stories in the dark. She might not have been smart like Sammy, but she knew her lore by the time she was in middle school. Knew it well enough to keep herself, and Sammy, safe. But when did she realize that humans were monsters, too? That monsters weren’t just the monsters her father told her about, but sometimes the man in the gas station who had cold eyes and a gun in his belt. When did she realize that her father didn’t understand that – couldn’t, because it would be too hypocritical. When did she decide that it was easier to think of things in good and bad, in Heaven and Hell? When did she decide it was easier to just put her head down, to be the loyal son and soldier?

Maybe it when she realized she wanted to be more like her father. When she realized it hurt too much not to be.)

“Michael,” Ada says.

Deanna shakes her head. She wonders if she should pull over. “What?”

“Nothing,” Ada says. “You should get some sleep.”

Deanna stares forward, down the dark road. “Soon.”

* * *

The whole working-for-Crowley thing doesn’t last too long. Which is good, because the demons who come to pick up the kills are dicks, in Deanna’s opinion. And Magnus Masters is a dick too, don’t get her wrong. But at least he’s more likely to tie them up and interrogate them than knife them in the back alley, which he demonstrates almost immediately after they drop off a rugaru for Crowley and find him waiting instead of the usual henchman.

“Nice digs,” Deanna says, and gestures to his new body. She misses flirtatious by several feet.

Magnus is looking at them with something that might be pity. “What _did_ they do to you two?”

“Million dollar question,” Deanna grumbles, but that’s not true. She knows, doesn’t she.

“Hey, Magnus,” Sammy says. “Want to make a deal?”

“Deals are for demons, Sam,” Magnus tells her. “Thought you knew that.”

Sammy tilts her head up. Her eyes are bleak in the flickering warehouse light. “Aren’t I close enough?”

(Once upon a time, Sammy said, _I want to be good. I’m trying to be good._

Deanna had illusions. Sammy was perfect, dad was right, mom was beautiful. Deanna knew those things like clockwork. She didn’t question them for a long time. Maybe she should have.

 _I want to be good_ , Sammy said. She said it like she was spilling her blood on the ground for it. Deanna didn’t know it at the time, but she was.

Deanna didn’t say, _you are good._ Because Sammy wasn’t perfect, but Sammy was good. Sammy was always good. She didn’t say it.

She should have said it.)

Samuel Campbell sells them out, which is unsurprising. Castiel goes to find Crowley’s bones, and Magnus is God-knows-where, and when Samuel comes up to the door of the cage they’ve put Deanna in, she reaches out and grabs onto his head. He struggles but she slams his head forward into the bars, slams it hard enough to hear his skull crack like an egg, lets the blood splash and bares her teeth at the last bit of surprise in his eyes.

Samuel’s body falls to the floor, his face a smashed mess. Deanna breathes out, the headache lessening, her body singing with it. She’s disconnected. She doesn’t care. On the other side of the wall, Sammy’s biting at her skin and painting a devil’s trap with her own blood. When the demons come to get them, Deanna’s got red crusted up to her wrists, and Sammy’s still wiping it off the corners of her mouth. Deanna doesn’t know how she ever fooled herself into thinking she was a good person, thinking that what her dad did was right. Humans are monsters, just as monsters are humans. Maybe Deanna’s one, too, but at least she protects her family.

“We should probably talk about this,” Sammy says, stepping over the bodies.

“Nah,” Deanna replies.

There’s a reason people think they’re fucked up, Deanna can admit. They might even deserve it.

Crowley spits things about Purgatory, about Eve. He and Magnus take turns beating each other in the Devil’s Trap, back and forth like a boxing ring. They stall until Cas shows up and burns the bag of bones that are, evidently, Crowley’s. Deanna can’t honestly say she remembers much of the exchange, what with the way the shadows slide around the room. Crowley and Cas in a room together, and the shadows flicker around them, goopy and thick. Deanna can’t take her eyes away, especially when Crowley lights on fire, especially when they grow angrier. Magnus laughs, and laughs, and laughs, horns and cold eyes and gaping darkness instead of a face. Deanna flinches.

“De,” Sammy says.

“Huh,” Deanna replies, then shakes her head. “Yeah?”

Sammy gestures towards the exit. “You want to, you know, go?”

“Right,” Deanna says. “Right.” She catches Cas on the way out. “You good?”

Cas blinks at her. “I am well, thank you.”

“You sure?” Deanna asks. “Cause you’re looking a little, you know,” she gestures in a circular motion around her head, not sure whether she’s referring to the blind eyes having multiplied or to the dripping ink from the slices in her neck, “messy.”

Both Cas and Sammy stare at her.

Cas asks, with something approaching genuine concern, “Are you alright, Deanna?”

Deanna blinks, and the wounds are gone. She drops her gaze. “No, yeah, I’m fine.”

Cas blinks. “Well – in any case, I have a request.”

“Sure, anything,” Deanna says immediately. “Favor for a favor, right?”

Cas offers her a head tilt and that bemused smile. “That is how this works, isn’t it?”

After a minute, Sammy asks, “So what is it?”

Deanna frowns at her for the frostiness in her tone.

“Yes,” Cas says. “The angelic weapons. You’ve already had contact with at least one, if not two.”

“Yeah,” Deanna agrees.

“I need you to hunt down the rest,” Cas says. “They are necessary. Whoever has the weapons wins the war.”

Deanna shrugs. “Ok.”

Sammy shifts. “De – ”

“Nah,” Deanna says, thinks about Balthazar. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

Cas offers her an earth-shattering smile. “Thank you, Deanna.” She disappears. Half the shadows in the world disappear with her.

Sammy seems like she wants to argue, but instead they call Bobby.

“How are you?” Sammy asks when he picks up, at the same time as Deanna says, “Hi, Bobby.”

There’s silence from the other end of the line, then an incredulous, “Have you two been cursed?”

“No,” Deanna says. “What – Bobby, we’re fine.”

“Then why the hell are you asking how I am?”

Sammy and Deanna both wince. “We were – wondering,” Sammy says.

Bobby seems as thrown by this as they are.

“Look,” Deanna finally says. “Is your deal with Crowley still there?”

“Uh,” there’s a ruffling of pages. “Yes?”

“What,” Deanna says.

“Fuck,” Sammy swears.

“Don’t tell me you idjits actually went and – ”

Deanna clears her throat and rubs the back of her neck. “We have and we did, Bobby.”

“Shut up and let me think,” Sammy tells the both of them. Then, “Fuck. Fuck, we have a problem.”

* * *

Deanna doesn’t want to believe that Cas is a traitor. She spends the whole car ride back to Lawrence arguing with Sammy about it. “What’s she even a traitor to?” She asks. “It’s not like there’s _sides_ , in this. She’s fighting Raphael! She’s still trying to stop the apocalypse!”

“Are you sure of that?” Sammy asks, eyes intense. No, not intense – dark. Deanna blinks, and they’re black, but not demon black, black like ashes, black like her eye sockets are full of black sand and it’s spilling out. There’s hollow moons stamped under her eyes, and her cheekbones are gaunt. Deanna doesn’t know the last time Sammy ate or slept. Deanna doesn’t know the last time _she_ ate or slept.

“I’m sure,” Deanna says, and rubs her eyes.

“Ok,” Sammy replies. She reaches out towards Deanna. “I trust you.”

Deanna’s shoulders relax, and she doesn’t notice how Sammy flinches when her hand lands over the wing-scars. “Then there’s nothing too much to worry about, right?”

“I still don’t think,” Sammy frowns, “I’m not sure she should just – give them to her.”

“But – ”

“If she’s working with Crowley,” Sammy says. “What does _he_ want with them? What are they planning?”

Deanna does not want to admit that her sister has a point, so she just doesn’t reply.

( _You trust so easily_ , an angel says to her someday, grinning. They’re not exactly an angel, but Deanna’s not exactly a woman. _It’s miraculous._

Deanna glares at them. _My whole life has been ordained for me by you guys_ , she says. _I sure don’t trust, and I sure as hell don’t trust you._

The angel will laugh, and laugh, and laugh. _Don’t lie. You give yourself over to people as soon as they prove they’re worthy. You’re a good daughter, Deanna. A good soldier._

They’re not the only one to say this. They’re not the only one to tell her this. She can never, ever, escape it.)

“The angelic weapons,” Ada says. “What does she want with them?”

It’s afternoon, and it’s cloudy, and it looks like it might snow. Missouri is doing a tarot reading for someone in the next room over. She says _Justice, the Tower, the Hanged Man_. Or maybe that’s just what Deanna’s hearing.

“Whoever has the weapons wins the war,” Sammy repeats.

“C’mon, guys,” Deanna says. “It’s _Cas_.”

“Those things are dangerous,” Ada is saying. “I mean – as far as I’ve found, _really_ dangerous.”

Sammy turns to Deanna. “Why’d Cas think you’d be able to find them?”

Deanna glances down at her feet. “I can see them. And hear them, I think.”

Neither Sammy nor Ada have a good answer to this. Something falls off a shelf. Ada looks down at the notebook she’s sketching in.

Deanna frowns at her. “Since when do you draw?”

Ada raises an eyebrow. “Since always?”

“Huh,” Deanna says. She blinks really hard, and rubs her eyes. “Yeah, sorry.”

They talk for a few hours about what’s been happening. Bobby calls halfway through, except Rufus is the one who’s actually calling. He tells them that Victoria had gotten in touch, that the pair of them are going to start tracking Eve. Sammy, who seems to trust Rufus quite a lot more now that he’s actually working with Bobby, tells him what they know. Bobby hops on at the end, gruff as usual, and Deanna won’t admit it but even with how unsteady the whole world is, it’s good to hear his voice. His and Rufus’s, the crazy old bat.

Then the sun’s setting, and Missouri’s rustling around in the kitchen cooking something that would smell good, if Deanna was any kind of hungry. The world’s awash in gold for a little while as the three Winchester sisters sit around the table, and then soon it’s gone, and all is dark again.

“You should both get some sleep,” Ada finally tells them, eyes flashing in the half-light of the kitchen. She sounds sad and tired. She’s the younger sibling; they should be taking care of her.

Deanna stares at the table, at what Ada’s drawing. She can’t figure out what it is. It’s a person, maybe. A girl. Freckles and a bright smile. Deanna says, “I think I need some fresh air.”

Sammy’s still as a statue, in the seat next to her. “I might go read,” Sammy says. She stands up from the table a little shaky, shoving her chair back and standing still for a moment as she tries not to black out.

(Deanna hated this, hated how she couldn’t help her. She used to get like this, when she was younger. She was six feet of nerd, but there were fights after which she made herself quiet.

Their father didn’t like it. It was their father’s fault.

Deanna hated him for it a little, too. Her sister was so full of light. She wasn’t allowed to make herself small like that, not for anyone.

Sammy would curl up in her bed some nights, curl up for warmth. There was hair all over her arms, all over her hands. It was what happened, when a body didn’t have enough fat to keep it warm. Deanna wrapped blankets around her and held her in her arms, hated how her brightness was dampened like this, hated how her ribs poked out. It shouldn’t be.

 _Your body’s not a cage_ , Deanna told her. That was an old song, wasn’t it. Deanna liked that song.

 _No_ , Sammy would whisper back. Even when she made herself small, she was still angry. _This house is._

It was metaphorical. The house meant their father, and the cage was him, too.)

Deanna stands up to go outside. She stands over Ada’s shoulder and watches her sketch for a moment, runs her fingers through Ada’s hair so like her own. She asks, “Who’s the drawing of? It’s really good, Ada.”

Ada goes very, very still. She says, “It’s you.”

* * *

They don’t find Balthazar. Balthazar finds them.

More accurately, he finds them doing research on the mother of monsters and the angelic weapons. It’s snowing, and Ada’s with them because they can borrow Missouri’s truck as long as Ada supervises and they leave Baby in Lawrence – which Deanna isn’t exactly happy about, but there’s a snow storm moving across the Midwest that ain’t stopping any time soon and has Heavenly force behind it, so she doesn’t want to mess around with that. Rufus and Victoria call them from somewhere in Michigan, and Deanna laughs over Victoria’s blunt opinions of Rufus as Ada paints Sammy’s nails and Sammy reads a book written in what might be Enochian. Ada’s a lot more invested in the angelic weapons, what with how reticent she’d been to restart hunting, and Deanna’s a little confused by that but she honestly has other things to worry about.

“Hello, girls,” says Balthazar.

Things like that.

Sammy has a gun trained on his face in under five seconds.

“Dad – damn it,” Ada says. “Now it’s going to chip, Sam.”

"What did they _do_ to you three,” Balthazar asks, just like Magnus. Unlike Magnus, he sounds impressed.

“Fuck off,” Ada tells him.

“Ah, no,” Balthazar says. “I happen to know you need me.” His eyes light on Deanna, and under his skin she can see the weapons sparking.

(There was once, when they were in Wyoming, when their father hadn’t been back home in a while. They’d been old enough to know why he was gone, but not old enough to wonder if this was the time he wouldn’t come back.

It was summer. They’d walked along the train tracks in the middle of the night, lukewarm mountain air and the breeze ruffling their hair. The stars in the sky so big and wide above.

 _I’m going to get out of her someday_ , said Deanna’s sister.

 _I know,_ Deanna whispered.

A blink, and they were no longer on the tracks, but on the train itself, on the roof of it. Wind ruffling through more than hair, but feathers, too. The Northern Lights above, every ion of them sparking through her veins.

 _I’m going to get out of her someday,_ said Deanna’s sibling.

 _I know_ , she whispered.)

She cuts the weapons out of him. Slices along the grace-stitches, tears open the body he wears. It’s not the first time she’s done this, she doesn’t think. She can’t think.

“That does feel better, doesn’t it,” Balthazar asks, standing up and stretching. The wounds where the angelic weapons had been stretch bloody and gaping and full of teeth, like hungry mouths. He doesn’t bother to heal them. Deanna thinks he might be high on the pain of it. He’s certainly smiling loopily like he is.

“Why are you giving them to us?” Sammy asks.

Balthazar says, eyes intent on Deanna and weeping silver tears, “Because I have seen my family corrupted by this power before, and at least I can try to spare my younger sibling.”

“Oh,” Deanna says. Then, “Will you help us?”

“Help you,” Balthazar says. “I’m already a dead man walking, girl. I’m certainly not helping you any more than this.”

Ada hasn’t said anything, just stands behind them with her arms crossed over her chest.

“You know what to do,” Balthazar says to her. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you. Or – maybe you already knew from the start.”

“Ada?” Deanna asks, glancing back.

Ada’s quiet. Then, “Ok.”

“Haniel says hello,” Balthazar tells them. “Be careful. We’re actually rooting for you, you know. Do _try_ not to disappoint us all.”

He disappears, leaving all the silver grace behind. It’s spattered over the walls, over Deanna’s hands, over the weapons on the floor that flicker and waver. Deanna should be disgusted with herself, she thinks distantly. She certainly had been the first time she’d used skills learned from Alistair. She isn’t now. She doesn’t know why, just that her head doesn’t hurt quite so much and the humming is quieter too. That the weapons are on the carpet of Bobby’s house, and Deanna wants to pick them up. She wants to see what would happen.

“We have to hide them,” Ada says. “I think that’s our only choice.”

“We could talk about this with Cas,” Deanna feels like she has to add, though she absolutely hates talking and both of her sisters know this.

“I don’t really trust Cas, De,” Sammy says. “And Cas sure doesn’t trust us, not after the stunt we pulled with the archangels.”

“Do you trust me?” Ada speaks up. “Because I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

Deanna blinks at her youngest sister. Firelight in her hair, golden freckles on her cheeks. “Of course I trust you,” Deanna says.

Sammy doesn’t hesitate either. “What’s the plan, Ada?”

(The woods were dark and deep. They played hide and seek among the trees. The sun hadn’t risen yet – maybe the sun hadn’t ever risen. There were others in the woods, but right now it was just her and her sisters.

 _Come and find me_ , the littlest shouted. _I bet you can’t catch me_!

 _Here I come,_ Sammy called. _I bet I can_.

A rustle of wings, and the takeoff. Blue and black and gold. The shadows of the wood, the shadows which it hid. Deanna’s wings flared wide.

 _I found you_ , Sammy said. This was before everything, wasn’t it. Eyes made of pure light, shining white out of her eye sockets. The Morningstar – that had been the thing about her fall, the thing Deanna hated. Darkness wasn’t about darkness, it was about the absence of light.

 _You did,_ Deanna said.

 _You haven’t found me_ , their third sister declared. Hiding in plain sight, hiding above their heads. _You won’t find me._ )

The weapons are hidden, and Cas knows. She catches up to them in Wisconsin.

“You haven’t found them,” Ada tells her. “You won’t find them.”

“I brought you back,” Cas says. “I pulled you out of the _Cage_. I’m on your side, Deanna. You know that.”

“You didn’t just bring us back,” Deanna says, voice hoarse suddenly. “Cas – ”

“We’re not telling you where they are,” Sammy tells the angel.

Deanna and Sammy don’t even know where all of them are; Ada hid some, in places she won’t tell them, and Bobby hid the others. Cas stares at Deanna, looking betrayed. Deanna stares at the ground. She hates this. She hates this.

Cas opens her mouth, then closes it, human and not. Teeth protrude from her neck, breaking through the skin. Her face shuts down. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Cas,” Deanna tries, but Cas just steps forward, full of might, slamming Deanna and Sammy against the back wall of the 7-Eleven. Fingers to their foreheads, and –

The wing-scar on her back goes white-hot and blistering. Deanna might be screaming, and Sammy surely is. The lights flicker and go out in the convenience store, the big sign sparking and blowing out. Deanna falls to her knees in the gravel, curling away from memories and words and the brand on her back, the brand she can’t escape. Maybe Deanna already knew this. Maybe Deanna’s always known this. There’s blood on her lips; she’s bitten through her tongue. She looks over, and Sammy’s bleeding from her nose, eyes rolled back in her head, whimpering and curling on the ground like she did when they first came back. Deanna looks up at her youngest sister, standing before Cas.

“Leave,” Ada says to Cas, except it’s not Ada. It’s Gabriel. Eyes gleaming golden, haloed by the setting sun. “ _Leave_.”

Then it’s just the three of them. Deanna yanks at her hair, trying to get her head to stop hurting. The light reflecting off Ada, the light absorbed by Sammy. She leans over, hands on her knees, and pukes. There’s blood in it, but she’s not sure that matters.

“De,” Ada says, crouching down and touching her face.

“Don’t touch me,” Deanna says, shoving herself backwards. “ _Gabriel_.”

“I had no _choice_. I had no choice, De.”

“Is Ada even _alive_?”

“I’m still _me_ ,” Ada says, desperate. “I’m still Ada.”

“Sure.” Deanna snorts. “Just like I’m still me.”

Ada freezes. “Aren’t you?”

Deanna shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Not the way I should be.”

Ada grabs her, grabs her shoulders. The wing-scar _hurts_. Everything hurts. If Deanna thought the world had hurt before, it’s nothing compared to now. Decades upon decades in the Cage. Did Michael come back out with her? Is she even herself anymore?

“Deanna,” Ada says. “Deanna.”

"Shut up,” Deanna snaps. “You’re not her.”

“I am.” Ada holds her, eyes big in her face. She’s too young. “I am, De, please believe me.”

Deanna closes her eyes, but she doesn’t let Ada go.

“Come on,” Ada says, voice shaking a little. “We need to get Sam out of here. I – Gabriel helped me put up walls in your heads, when you came back. So that you wouldn’t feel the torture. It was too bad for Sam, she couldn’t even remember English. Michael must have protected you, a little, but not Lucifer. The walls were necessary, De, you know you’d have done the exact same thing in my place.”

Ada knows her too well.

“But Cas tore them down,” Ada says, too quiet. “She tore them all down.”

"It’s not all your fault,” Deanna tells her. “They’d been breaking for a while.” The way the world leaked, the colors. She’d been tuning into angel radio. That had been the singing.

“We need to get out of here,” Ada says.

Sammy’s shivering, violently. She’s too thin, too cold, the absence of light and warmth, and Deanna had barely noticed. She’d been too caught up in her own head, in the way it had been breaking, that she hadn’t even noticed. She feels like she might puke.

"Ok,” Deanna says. “Ok.”

They lift Sammy between them, like when they’d first come back. Three archangels, broken beyond repair. Three sisters, lost beyond imagining.

“I don’t know how we’re going to fix this,” Deanna says.

Ada is very quiet. “Me neither.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is hastily edited but i needed to get it out because I HAVE OTHER THINGS I NEED TO WRITE AND THIS JUST WOULDNT LEAVE ME ALONE grrr
> 
> side not my body is a cage is a good song, but the santa clara vanguard 2018 version of it is even better (baritone duet has my heart) probably nobodys gonna know what im talking about but if theres any dci ppl out there just know i love you

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are crack
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](https://stormwarnings.tumblr.com/)


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